Sky Window 3

During the pandemic, enjoying the expanse of nature has been an even more important connection for me. I have been using a 360 camera to capture imagery from my walks. The circular form repeats often, I find that a comfort and also a limit, mirroring the self containment and isolation social distancing requires. The filming technique also creates a disembodied sense of floating.  

In this project I return to footage I filmed this winter at my families’ ranch in Texas, the land is being overwrought by a quarry. As a child I spent every summer and most other holidays on this land, it is a sanctuary for me, a place where I marked and began my artistic processes of working with my hands and my connection with the environment.

As my dear Aunt and Uncle age and prepare to leave this world, it pains me to see that the land that is a part of them, disrupted. A quarry is overtaking the land, excavating it into an unrecognizable terrain more like the moon than the place of my childhood. The clang and clamor of machines interrupt the quiet of the pasture. It’s hard to say what was more potent, the land/environment, the care from my relatives or if it was the act of making and moving in nature. What I know is that being there, moving through nature, using my hands to make began a healing process that has shaped my life.