Desert Neighbors 2016 - This project is about a peace advocate and a gun owner coming together and having a conversation. About listening and hearing and finding common ground. I did this and the result was surprising. These prints are the result of those conversations.
Desert Neighbors
For the work on view at the “GUNS” show I detoured from the plants on my desert property to my neighbors homes. I am breaking all desert convention by approaching my neighbors, and then, armed with the with the knowledge that desert people own guns, I ask if they have a gun and would they “let me make a cyanotype print of it?” The resulting sun print, the shadow cast by the weapon on the paper, is like a medical X-Ray, a transposed view of the object inviting identification of underlying pathology, underlying cultural understandings. The resulting brilliant blue life sized shadow of a weapon is the result of a conversation with the owner. The result of “conversations we do not have”.
LIMITED EDITION ARTIST BOOK, EDITION of 50 with actual photographic print insert.
Desert Neighbors
For the work on view at the “GUNS” show I detoured from the plants on my desert property to my neighbors homes. I am breaking all desert convention by approaching my neighbors, and then, armed with the with the knowledge that desert people own guns, I ask if they have a gun and would they “let me make a cyanotype print of it?” The resulting sun print, the shadow cast by the weapon on the paper, is like a medical X-Ray, a transposed view of the object inviting identification of underlying pathology, underlying cultural understandings. The resulting brilliant blue life sized shadow of a weapon is the result of a conversation with the owner. The result of “conversations we do not have”.
A Limited Edition Artist Zine“Desert Neighbors” with text and miniaturized reproductions of the actual cyanotype prints in an edition of 125 accompanies the work.
September 2016