Submission record, part II

This may be the cheesiest statement I've ever written. I feel kind of dirty. But here it is:

Artist's Statement: Flood

I grew up thirty minutes away from the ocean. It dominated the landscape. Cardinal directions translated into towards the ocean, or away from it. South meant that the ocean was to my right. When I left the coast for the first time, to move to Iowa, directions no longer made sense to me. What good was East or West, without an ocean for reference? When I was surrounded by thousands of miles of land? There wasn’t a complete lack of water in my new home. We had rivers and lakes. They kept, mostly, out of the way.

Then came the flood. The land gave way to those little, mild-mannered, rivers and lakes that I had dismissed so easily. Towards the river, or away from it meant the difference between destroyed homes and businesses, and safe land. My apartment on the hill became beachfront property. Even after the river returned to its former size, and water relinquished the town, I remained aware of it. Before the flood, I lived in the absence of water. After the flood, it was everywhere I looked. Playgrounds and shops, pastures and cornfields, they were all covered by my memory of water.

In these images, I am re-submerging the landscape by submerging the camera in a bag of water. I give my remembered water a literal form, and allow it to shape the landscape around me.

Sent to http://visualarts.emory.edu/events/prospectus.html for the Picturing Home juried exhibiton at Emery University.

deadline: Nov 3
notifications: Nov 9