Land in Water - 2013 - Inkjet prints - 36" x 36"
Land in Water focuses on erosion in the navigation and pipeline canals of the current and historical Mississippi River deltas. The images are a direct record of the erosional processes along with everything else that water contains. Each bears witness to the land in the water, to a space that is being erased by the lines we draw in the landscape. It is witness to unintentional devastation occurring on a vast scale. Land in Water documents the silt, debris, flora, and fauna in locations stretching from within urban environments to the Gulf of Mexico. Each image is a record of the ongoing erosional process occurring in environmentally or historically important locations. Each image is of the land slipping into the water. Formally the individual images work as unique color fields that simultaneously document a particular moment of environmental action. Blue/gray silt is stirred into the water as light filters down from an overcast sky. Debris disappears into a brown haze while shafts of afternoon sun strike down. Conceptually the images are united in immersing the viewer in a broad location of radical environmental change. The formal language of abstraction and beauty along with the material properties of the images submerge the viewer in the waters of the Mississippi River Delta.
These are images of the flood. The one to come and the ones past.