UNTIL HUMAN VOICES WAKE US 1999
Earth, glue, insufficient rain, ink, blood, dust, spit and muck on paper, 42” x 31” each
‘Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever… (Herman Melville)
...but what place hath reflection ‘in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is’ (Psalms 63:1)
Until Human Voices Wake Us is a drawing cycle that creates a contemplative chamber of mirage, of salvage, of dust. A series of individual life vests are drawn in blood and ink on a fields of cracked earth. The images are faint, painted with diluted washes that seep into and are swallowed up by the dirt ground. When viewed together the individual images seem to dissolve, emerge and evaporate again as a hallucination, mirage or apparition. Deserts and other arid lands are often conducive to the visionary. These representations become a catalog of promises, of unobtainable assistance or elusive rescue, all overwhelmed by the physicality of the dried mud.
This work has renewed relevance with the crisis of refugees feeing war and deprivation around the world..
mirage, salvage, dust
projections of assistance, liberation, fulfillment
buoy the disconsolate, oppressed, parched flailing in the sun
proclamations of remedy, re-stabilization, 40 acres and a mule
entice the weary and unwary alike, clutching to believe
provisions of austerity measures, the short term before
the long haul, financial undertow
reward the buried with all they can eat
