Installation during the Terra Incognita exhibition at the Mills College Art Museum; May 2015; Photo by Phil Bond Photography
Detail photo of installation during the Terra Incognita exhibition at the Mills College Art Museum; May 2015; Photo by Phil Bond Photography.
Using natural bodies in the landscape as a metaphor for the human body, I make portraits of places using site-specific crushed minerals and flora suspended in a liquid matrix. I then use a subwoofer to feed amplified field recordings into the materials to displace them. The action of the sound on the materials imbues the work with the spirit of the place. In this body of work, the Sound Skin series, I make sculptural paintings that use liquid latex as the matrix in which materials such as diamond dust, atomized copper powder, or beach sand are suspended. The latex cures as it is being vibrated by collected sounds. The result is a skin of a specific site: the skin of a white dwarf star, or a skin of Seacliff Beach in Aptos, Ca. The latex participates as a material, and is also affected and manipulated by the sounds being fed into the work. The skins are portraits that embody the places from which they are derived. In addition to looking like skin and evoking the body, the latex is visceral in that it ages. It is not an archival material. The skins will eventually change color, fade, become brittle, and break down, just as our bodies will over time. The material viscerality creates an opening for the viewer to find a connection with the place being portrayed and embodied. These are objects of transmission, containing the ephemerality of place, as well as being objects themselves, acting as records of a moment in that place.
15"x17"x4"; Latex, iron oxides, sand from Ocean Beach, potassium muscovite mica, bronze particles, black galaxy granite, pyrite, hornblende, pulsating waves of alpha Centauri
15"x17"x4"; Latex, iron oxides, sand from Ocean Beach, potassium muscovite mica, bronze particles, black galaxy granite, pyrite, hornblende, pulsating waves of alpha Centauri
2'x5'7"x5"; Diamond dust, indigo, latex, bronze particles, pulsating waves of a white dwarf star; 2015
4'6"x9'x4"; Sand from Aptos Beach, crushed exoskeletons of sand fleas, bronze particles, pyrite, crushed seashells, water from the Pacific Ocean, jute rope, latex, field recordings from Seacliff Beach, sea salt crystals
20"x 27": Liquid latex, sand from Ocean Beach, iron oxides, saltwater, potassium muscovite mica, pyrite; 2015
116”x 51.5”x 2”; Liquid latex, atomized copper powder, saltwater, pyrite, iron-based blue pigment, sound of original Moog compositions created at Mills; 2015
7.5”x 9”; Liquid latex, iron-based blue pigment, sea water, diamond dust, pulsating waves of a White Dwarf star; 2015
A generative compression is seen in the folded layers of rock that are embodied by a dancer in
the photo-video installation, Rock/Bodies. It is a conversation between one mass and the echo
of another. The scale at which these rocks were layered, displaced, pinched, hollowed, and
crumpled is vast and intangible. When the dancer’s body holds that vastness, there is the echo
of form and of movement, though at a different rate. But there is also the echo of formation:
the human body is composed of many of the same elements composing the emulated rock
layers, leaving the question: where does the human body end and the rock body begin?
Archival Pigment Print, 30"x 80"; Series collaboration with Jaq Hannah Dalziel, 2014
Archival Pigment Print, 40"x 60"; Series collaboration with Jaq Hannah Dalziel, 2014
Archival Pigment Print, 40"x 60"; Series collaboration with Jaq Hannah Dalziel, 2014
Archival Pigment Print, 40"x 60"; Series collaboration with Jaq Hannah Dalziel, 2014
Archival Pigment Print, 30"x 80"; Series collaboration with Jaq Hannah Dalziel, 2014
Excerpt from the Rock/Bodies HD video installation at the Mills College Art Museum, May 2015. Featuring Jaq H. Dalziel
Installation of four photos and one HD video, Mills College Art Museum, 2015. Photo by Phil Bond Photography.
Bodies of Water was an interdiscplinary program that took place on May 31, 2015 at the Mills College Art Museum in conjuction with the Terra Incognita exhibition. All of the performances in the program dealt with our human bodies as bodies of water, or the relationship between the two bodies. Participants included Megan Amal, Josh Casey, Jaq H. Dalziel, gabby fluke-mogul, k. kipperman, Erika Oba, Adria Otte, and Miranda Robbins.
Photography by Dani Padgett. Videography by Leila Weefur. Editing of photos and videos by Miranda Robbins.
My sound paintings series investigates how the essence of a place is embedded within its constituents. These paintings are portraits of natural bodies using site‐specific components. The portraits bring the place to the viewer, but are obviously something totally different.
11"x14"; Iron oxide, augite, potassium muscovite mica, water from the Pacific Ocean, field recording from Notre Dame de Paris Mass, on paper
12"x18"; Crushed Baltimore Canyon shale, fired and crushed Baltimore Canyon clay, indigo, Baltimore Canyon creek water, on paper
12"x18"; Crushed Baltimore Canyon shale, fired and crushed Baltimore Canyon clay, indigo, Baltimore Canyon creek water, Baltimore Canyon field recording, on paper
12"x19"; Iron oxide, pyrite, water from the Pacific Ocean, field recording from Ocean Beach, on paper
9"x 12"; Sand from Aptos Beach, water from the Pacific Ocean, crushed exoskeletons of sand fleas, crushed sea shells, indigo, field recording of waves crashing, on paper
8"x8"; Red Iron Oxide, water from the Pacific Ocean, crushed pyrite, sea salt crystals, sound of waves crashing at Rodeo Beach, on galvanized steel
8"x8"; Yellow iron oxides, water from the Pacific Ocean, salt crystals from Utah salt flats; sound of waves crashing at Ocean Beach, on galvanized steel
8"x8"; Indigo, water from the Pacific Ocean, sea salt crystals, pulsating waves of xi Hydrae, on galvanized steel
8"x8"; Yellow and orange iron oxides, crushed pyrite, sea salt crystals, chert, water from the Pacific Ocean, field recording from Rodeo Beach, on galvanized steel
8"x8"; Indigo, water from the Pacific Ocean, augite, muscovite mica, pulsating waves of alpha Centauri, on galvanized steel
12.5"x12"; Red and organge iron oxides, pyrite, water from the Pacific Ocean, Italian agate, Southern California Muscovite Mica, dirt collected from Utah desert, salt crystals from Utah salt flats, long and wide band sound waves of stars, on iron substrate
10"x4.5"x0.25"; Indigo, diamond dust, water from the Pacific Ocean, Black Galaxy granite, Night Sky green granite, pulsating waves of three different stars, on raw steel
11.25"x4"; Sand from Aptos beach, water from the Pacific Ocean, crushed exoskeletons of sand fleas, crushed sea shells, crushed pyrite, indigo, field recording from Aptos beach, on steel
Shot in the varied and beautiful landscape of the Point Reyes National Seashore, "between the reflection and the sea" chronicles the journey of a body of water transporting small stones from the sea, through forest, across a fault line, inland.
Duration: 8min, 54 sec
We hear a song shared by the sea when the water glasses are played using the ocean to fill them.
Audio was recorded at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, 2014, by Miranda Robbins, then processed and manipulated by Adria Otte.
"Ocean Lines: Rodeo Beach (for violin)" was composed using the contours of where the ocean meets the shore at Rodeo Beach. The score was performed and recorded by Adria Otte for the HD film installation, With the Bow.
Photographs of Previous Work by Sibila Savage Photography.
Site-specific; Audio cassettes, wire
Site-specific; Plaster, audiotape
20”x 14”x 7”; Flax, glue, embroidery thread
Site-specific; each ~8.3’x 4’ Audio cassettes, wire
24”x 10.5”x 13.5”; Ceramic, audiotape
9”x 12”, graphite on archival paper; 2023
