Points on Time: three new ink works

Points on Time :Point Reyes
Napa
St. Helena

Ink Block Prints on Paper
11”x14” each

“Most of us are separated from organic geographical communities; even fewer can rely on blood ties.  We can only hope to find created communities or communities that are accidentally formed through place, workplace, and other artificial means.  But most of us live such fragmented lives and have so many minicommunities that no one knows us as a whole.  The incomplete self longs for the fragments to be brought together.  This can’t be done without a context, a place.”
      - Lucy Lippard  / Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society  

Recently, as I consider my current environment and living situation, I have become interested in the concept of timelines and how we visualize time across a linear scale. Historically, timelines were static images, and generally drawn or printed on paper. They relied heavily on graphic design, and the ability of the artist to visualize the data.  Most timelines are now digital or interactive, but I like the idea of pictures being a marker: not just a point on a line, but representing a more complete experience with a certain time and place.

These three newly completed works represent an attempt to discover my sense of place through landscape.  Having just returned to the U.S. after living in Germany, and having moved several times in the past 5 years, I have become increasingly aware of my longing for a less fragmented life.  Visually interpreting the local landscape represents for me a starting point for understanding my environment and how I fit in to it.  The awareness of my immediate physical surroundings also marks my current time along a continuing path.