Mount Sutro is a natural rain forest in San Francisco, home to eucalyptus and pine and drenched with the fog and wind that comes in off the nearby Pacific. The UCSF hospital is built into the side of this hill, and the windows of the hospital seem scant barrier to the vividly animating hillside, where sunlight ignites the motion in the early morning and the movement increases with intensity, even frenzy, as the day progresses. The spirit inside and the life outside meld into a single rhythm of coming and going.
This is an intimate story of my husband’s illness and death, and how I imagined his gradual passage out into the space of the forest, the garden, the growing heart of it all. I made these images purely caught up in those days with Mel. I hope his loving nature and the love and tenderness of all those around us come through in my pictures. I hope they are convincing enough in the ways of poetry and suggestion to reach beyond just one person or one family and that others can recognize something of themselves and their loved ones in this story.
The images in this series are all digital stills, but are meant to be shown on screen as a series of sequential images, something of a cross between a stop-motion animation and a slide show. This is a proposal for a viewing arrangement, with a place where visitors can sit and watch the images in a quiet, meditative way.
this is the bed
the bed, Mel, soft plants
wind-swept
shifting realities
getting out of bed
out of the bed but still in the hospital
more outside than inside
out, walking
new landscape
happy to be hiking
outside, but what's the bed doing here
back into the hospital for "just one more test"
tests
tests
leaving the hospital
coming home, to our garden
back home, in the garden
in the garden, Guan Yin
passing
passing
passing
somehow we're back here at the hospital, trying to leave from another side
barely enough light
trying to cross this shattering bridge
so much at once
deeper into the forest
collapse
hardly enough
without determination
at the edge of the forest
can this be so green
inside and outside
woodland
all in motion
into a new landscape
new journey
passage
visitors
the scene
still seen
Making compositions of small things, flowers, seeds, and beads and photographing them as natural landscapes.
A collage of papers and small objects evocative of a painted landscape.
In the 3D world, there’s no gravity, no wind, light, color unless you specifically add them to your scene. From the barest possible starting point you have to choose everything…but this also means you can subvert any and every law of natural dynamics in the real world, ie. objects can float and drift, morph from one form to another, and divide into a mass of particles and disperse into space.