

"This Desert Life"
see below for more/process shots
This piece, which is a kind of sculpture-painting hybrid, was a long time coming and represents the direction that I’m really interested in taking my art-- that is, making visually provocative art (you decide if that's achieved) that has a basis in science and also speaks to societal issues at-large.
I have long been fascinated by water issues in the American West. I guess this comes from my undergraduate education at UCSB, where we learned stories about William Mullholand, water treaties, and the development of Los Angeles. Cadillac Desert is an amazing book. On the way to Santa Barbara from Houston, I would often have layovers in Phoenix, which kind of epitomizes thef conflict between the natural environment and the ridiculous, unsustainable lifestyles of (some) occupants of the area.
This piece was provoked by those sentiments, as well as an amazing photo of subsidence of the San Joaquin Valley in California due to groundwater extraction and some data of subsidence contours that I have my students work with. This painting portrays Palmdale, CA (a kind of hellish suburb of LA) and its surroundings, where subsidence has also occurred (though of slightly lesser magnitude, its presence in suburbia is in a way more significant in a sense to me).
I am interested in landscape in its both literal and metaphorical senses. I see this piece of art as a meeting of those two ideas. The surface itself comes from a USGS map of land subsidence (so not actual topography-- so actually creating a new landscape out of scientific data). The wires that 'hover' above the surface represent the current levels of the groundwater (circa mid-90's). I'm interested in how our lifestyles and actions are manifested in visible and invisible ways.... (and thus playing a bit with positive and negative space). The inclusion of aluminum foil, silver paint, salt, and sand are not accidental either-- but are intended to speak both to the natural state of the "system", and our modification of it. I could write more that you probably won't read, so if you're interested in learning more, let me know and I'll talk your ear off about it since I've been living with this thing for about 4 months now.
Some other views/process shots:
