Category: From 2019

Some new crafts and drawings from the summer of 2019 finished! Check out the Drawing or Craft pages to see more!

In a final editing of the filmed live performance, the video production of “Our World is Burning” is now available to be viewed via the following link to the film production.

Our World is Burning is an artwork, half performance and half film production, about the impacts of deforestation. The tree structure represents the support each tree provides our world. The forests are carbon sinks, soaking up the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and producing the oxygen we breath to live. The vines of paper strips convey facts that are woven into the very nature of the Earth and our unsustainable life style; what deforestation impacts, what forests and regions are being lost, what animals are going extinct, and even more facts.

In the performance, white gas is poured on the structure. Our dependency on oil and its byproducts is only speeding up the destruction of our planet by adding more carbon dioxide while the forests that soak up this poisonous gas are cut down. Or more accurately burned down.

It is undeniable that deforestation is terrible for our world but controversies remain. Agriculture, the biggest industry destroying the trees, continues to roll onwards as farmers the world over struggle between two choices, to starve or to burn. Their livelihood depends on farming the poor soil of the tropical forests. And to succeed, to make space for the crops and give the soil the nutrients needed for growing, the farms burn sections of the forest every few years when the old farmland stops producing.

Given the choice to starve or to burn, people will always chose survival and thus to burn the forests down for their livelihoods. Deforestation, bad as it is, is not as simple an issue to be solved over night. The cause of deforestation, poverty, must be addressed if the land, animals, and peoples are to thrive together.

Seeds of Perspective is a series of photographs showing a black surface scattered with points of colored light. The dots show 3D objects at first then the view point shifts. Each subsequent picture zooms in on a center light point. Slowly it becomes clear that the ‘center light point’ is a tiny bead glowing with color from the light behind it. Looking back on all the images it becomes clear that each point of light is a bead carefully set to create an illusory effect.

This artwork tricks the viewers eye. The artwork is created using paper and seed beads. An awl is used to perforate the paper’s surface in a predetermined pattern, then the beads are placed and glued in the holes. When held up against a backing of natural light, the beads let through the light and appear to glow.

This work meant as a reflection on values and assumptions. Each opinion and fact we hear, we assign value to in accordance with our own perspective of the world. These pieces of information, whether true or false, fact or opinion, statement or question, all are equal, like the surface of the paper. We, as individuals, value some more than others based entirely on our situation; holding closer those we agree with and push away those that challenge our perspectives. This is shown in how on a flat, 2D surface, the beads appear to create a 3D object with certain surfaces closer to the view than other. In this way the piece expresses how we create an individual view of the world out of the same, equal information. Seeds of Perspective brings to light these values by questioning our first assumptions, that the objects are not 3D but rather 2D. It challenges our first reactions and changes our perspective.