Abstract:
May 2010: Walked into the North Rim Campground at the Grand Canyon and left wanting to know more about Aspen trees. Plan to study all aspects of one tree with blind experimentation using art and amateur scientific process.
October 2011: Conclusion: N/A. Only documentation of time spent exploring using books and numbers and drawings and lectures trying to understand this living thing. Results include, but not limited to, observations on humility, inward realization of deeper connection to natural processes, appreciation of process of experimentation [where making one choice multiplies knowledge exponentially], a personal relationship with an inanimate object. Still evading total comprehension [see Exhibit A].
TITLES:
“level one and level two”
Oil on panel, 3X4’
Large white board, dry erase marker
“the relative frequency and position of positive and negative emotions over 365 days of my life”
Pencil and paper, 4X10’
Visual representation of my emotional state between April 10, 2010 and April 11, 2011. Left axis is a scale of my happiness between 15 and -15 plotted with dots for each separate day and how happy I was at the time from reading through data collected in my journals. I connected all of the dots within 18 inches
of each other (the size of my ruler) because every moment and emotion is relative to the moments before and after.
“Let’s try climbing it”
Video, 4 min 50 sec
“I still don’t know anything, really”
Installation; fishing line and nails plotted using a cross section of one Aspen tree cell
