1994 installation including a camera obscura, black plastic, photo mural paper, videos and monitors, scavenged rope, bag of wallpaper scrapings, table, canvas, and trash; dimensions variable This was my CalArts graduate thesis exhibition. In this installation, I constructed a camera obscura where both the subject and its reflection were visible in different locations inside the gallery. The 10' x 25' inverted and blurry camera obscura image was the first thing the viewer saw. Traveling through the darkened gallery you passed two video monitors; one showed the ground littered with trash and the base of a median strip on a freeway rushing by at sixty miles an hour, while the other displayed a sidewalk scene at night lit only by street lamps. A severe close-up of the sidewalk reveals a dying cockroach being slowly consumed by a swarm of ants. Eventually you came to a brightly lit, small circular area enclosed by black plastic sheeting. Inside the enclosure on a canvas covered table sat a mouldering trash pile that consisted of old sweepings from my mother's basement. It was the camera obscura projection of this pile that greeted you upon entering the gallery. This installation used lost and discarded materials to explore the intersections between beauty and decay, memory and preservation, and photography and video. click thumb nails to see larger image -- back to home page --