Rome 2016
I went to Rome with the intention of doing something with the intersection of movement and landscape. I was interested in Lake Bracciano with its volcanic origin and underground springs. A month's residency at C.R.E.T.A went past like a dream. Some of materials were lost with my luggage, and I found myself scrounging around for bits of ceramic that could be ground to use to open up the body of the solid shapes that currently populate my studio. I found shards in the bottom of the lake - these shards, so unintended, became the locus of time there - here is a bit of what I wrote describing some of the shard pieces:
There is a bike I ride; I go out at the beginning and end of the day, watching the shadows. It is July so the sun is strong and the shadows are dark, crisp against the ground. It is hot. Every day we go down the hill to the lake to swim. We swim in beautiful water inside an extinct volcano. There are shards here, and strange volcanic rocks, so many, all over the floor of the lake. Everyday we take our bucket and fill it with rocks and shards. We swim, and fill our bucket and swim again. Everyday the shadows and the shards and the watery volcano. What is real and what is lost? Are the shards we collect everyday the real object, hidden for so long within the whole, waiting to be released or are they shadows, reduced to ephemera? What about the days spent here? Can I take them; make them solid, watch as time and memory wear them away? The bits and pieces from the lake are worn smooth, sometimes you can still see the hint of a curve, a bit of glaze, but the forces acting on them have imposed new categories, the language reduced and simplified. A flag snaps, the shadows lengthen and we dive once more into the volcano.
