Art form: 2-D, 3-D

Medium: granular salt, powder earth, light, others

Year created: Work not created yet

Description of work: The work will be a site-specific installation made of salt and earth. Ten to one hundred (contingent on the available venue space) portraits will be photographed in downtown Grand Rapids, by way of chance/fate encounters with residents of the community. These life size images will be created directly on the gallery floor. Each will be entirely comprised of a mound of granular salt and local earth. These portraits will be highly temporal and fragile. This work will be sensitive to the slightest touch or breath of air and thus will shift and deteriorate over time. Each portrait will be illuminated by a single light source, which will subtly yet continually pulsate, cycling through lightness and darkness 365 times a day. Ultimately these portraits will be swept away at the end of the event.

Work statement: Making art objects that are inherently fragile and temporal rather than permanent objects that would be archived, I hope to parallel the nature of our own existence. The work is meant to serve as meditation on time, memory, and the state of the human condition.

Salt and earth have been the primary materials used to create my work. I am continually interested in using materials that have intrinsic history and meaning. Salt and earth are ubiquitous elements found in all of the oceans and lands of the world. Although abundant, they are necessary elements to sustain human life.