SUSPENDED ANIMATION #11 – JACOB’S LADDER
2022
photographic print, collage, ink, acrylic, resin, paper – 12” x 12” x 1”
About SUSPENDED ANIMATION #11 – JACOB'S LADDER
Jacob's Ladder takes up the split-second experience of noticing the presence of beautiful, verdant green leaves vividly alive in the middle of urban life’s concrete jungle. This iteration of the Suspended Animation series extends that momentary observation and draws on a new photographic method consciously intended to remind myself: see differently. If you’re lost, rediscover your way by turning the world upside down. Don’t ever forget to look up. Created from a singular static photo, Suspended Animation #11 employs a collage technique intended to create the sensation of a diamond for the viewer’s eye, a subtle suggestion of the invaluable jewel that is the simultaneous fragility and tenacity of survival and flourishing in the harshest of circumstances.
About the series:
Our ability to assess distance or proximity relies on depth perception, the capacity to view objects in three dimensions. In everyday, our very lives depend on this overlooked element of human vision; failure to assess and absorb different perspectives renders even the most mundane activities, like a highway commute to work, dangerously lethal. Each iteration of Suspended Animation focuses on an encounter in everyday life, capturing in freeze-frame otherwise seemingly insignificant moments in time to enable an appreciation for the small details, the little things, the beauty of overlooked miracles that too often blend into our surroundings.
Some pieces in Suspended Animation feature a singular photograph as the work’s central element, using transparent media like glass, acrylic, or resin to magnify and illuminate the moment in question—giving viewers the chance to look again, this time, from new perspectives. Others use the momentary act of viewing as a meditative experiment. Here, I retain the series’ approach to transparency and media forms and extend the experience by supplementing collage techniques to enable sustained consideration of everyday life’s unrealized possibilities—a dazzling kaleidoscope of infinite variations. Time constitutes the central conceptual element behind the series Suspended Animation, inviting the viewer to a shared moment of experiential pleasure and contemplation, and reminds us to stop and see differently. This work is difficult to classify, constituting both sculpture and mixed media, while simultaneously resisting any attempt at easy categorization.
Some pieces in Suspended Animation feature a singular photograph as the work’s central element, using transparent media like glass, acrylic, or resin to magnify and illuminate the moment in question—giving viewers the chance to look again, this time, from new perspectives. Others use the momentary act of viewing as a meditative experiment. Here, I retain the series’ approach to transparency and media forms and extend the experience by supplementing collage techniques to enable sustained consideration of everyday life’s unrealized possibilities—a dazzling kaleidoscope of infinite variations. Time constitutes the central conceptual element behind the series Suspended Animation, inviting the viewer to a shared moment of experiential pleasure and contemplation, and reminds us to stop and see differently. This work is difficult to classify, constituting both sculpture and mixed media, while simultaneously resisting any attempt at easy categorization.