EPHEMERALITY

To consider life is to consider its limitations. Contemplation, as I experience it, is intimately connected to a sense of my own mortality. My work reflects this vulnerability. There are many artists at work today, in whom this awareness may also be found. Much work is temporary: installation work and performance art, for instance, are deeply connected to time. Environmental work is typically intended to deteriorate naturally with the changing seasons. Even art created for museums is sometimes made from materials that are less than archival and clearly not meant to last. Some is crumbling on display, more is deteriorating in storage. I believe our culture, in general, is not as interested in making a “permanent” mark on the world as has been fairly typical in art over the centuries. The old trope about art being a path to immortality for artists is not so true as it once was. This may be due to a general skepticism over the long-term prognosis for our culture, or, indeed, our planet, and much work is reflective of that viewpoint. Many artists see no point in making things that will live for centuries. Ephemerality and entropy are themselves common themes.

I identify to some degree with these artists, however I associate myself more closely with those who are interested in temporality as a simple human awareness of the fragility of life. In my contemplative engagement I am invested more in the natural, everyday end to things than in the fate of the planet. In my Stone Poems and in my Disappearing Journal series, I consider the ordinary shortness of life in the natural cycles of all nature. As the seasons come and go, so too do we all. This is an ancient wisdom, and the ephemerality of my work holds this contemplation, treasuring the transitory nature of all creation.