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REMOTE SENSING (2008-2009)Artist Statement
With its unemotional eye and heartless body, a satellite can exist in the vacuum of space. Its cool, flat gaze rises above the full heat of strife. There are times in life that I want to harness a similarly lucid, unflinching, and impervious perspective. But it is a fantastical, escapist thought to consider the data from a satellite as any whole form of truth. It is an abstraction--a fragment--that lacks the spectrum of fact and sensation needed to fully understand a situation.
These recent works document my investigation of control and chaos within personal relationships. They all assume a synoptic view above the action, and show command and precision alongside leakage and devastation. I layer long-lasting materials like Mylar drafting film and acrylic paint with acidifying newsprint and crumbling clay to serve as metaphors for my repeated efforts to clean up messes, control damages, and distance myself from future catastrophes. By slicing through and layering the drawings, I use the translucence of the drafting film to show some details as clear and others as clouded. Geometric symbols suggest communication, strategy, and observation, while attempts at intervention and salvage (e.g., clay sewn into pockets) are earnest yet ultimately futile.
I have seen the world from an aerial perspective since childhood. My mother worked for 25 years at the EROS Data Center, a remote sensing lab for the US Geological Survey. It was not until I visited their online archive that I realized how intimately I identified with the satellite images I saw at EROS. In a visit in 1991, I looked at three aerial photographs capturing the malicious burning of Kuwaiti oil derricks during the first Iraq war. 17 years later, I made the drawing titled Boundary (the first drawing in the slideshow). The pluming black ink, the shape of the newsprint, the red-orange accents, the dark blue pigment, and even the four yellow markers resonate uncannily with these images of Kuwait. I rediscovered them several months after completing the drawing. I had subconsciously archived these images in my teen mind, and conjured them again through my adult hand. This is both haunting and reassuring.
