How to plant a garden, 2016
photo: Yvonne Singer
installation: Digital Print Studio, York University
I sit in the kitchen and scan the room, noticing how the light falls on the counter, on the walls and on the objects on a shelf. I look out the window and imagine what I will plant in the spring or how I want to change the garden. I sit in my office and stare out the window, noting on the house next door, the beige aluminum siding with its parallel edges like lines on a notebook, the familiar configurations of the trees and rooftops. How to plant a garden scroll is the result of my literal and metaphoric reflections on being on the inside looking out and imagining rearranging furniture on the inside, rearranging the garden outside or just noticing insignificant moments and corners in the room. I have this need to document my surroundings. When my eyes land on a pile of books or a corner of my desk or whatever, I think about making a photograph to reproduce what my eyes are looking at…but the photo is always lacking and never the same as what I see with my eyes so I need to photograph again and again and again. I have so many more photos and I continue to make more. Like the airplane scrolls, I could wallpaper a room with them. Does the quantity, the repetition diminish the single image or does it convey time and a mood like Moira Davey’s videos and photos series?
I see how to plant a garden as a companion piece to the air I breath is the air you touch.
They offer contrasting perspectives; an aerial view and a grounded view; looking down and looking up but both from inside a confined/defined space
photo: Yvonne Singer
installation: Digital Print Studio, York University
I sit in the kitchen and scan the room, noticing how the light falls on the counter, on the walls and on the objects on a shelf. I look out the window and imagine what I will plant in the spring or how I want to change the garden. I sit in my office and stare out the window, noting on the house next door, the beige aluminum siding with its parallel edges like lines on a notebook, the familiar configurations of the trees and rooftops. How to plant a garden scroll is the result of my literal and metaphoric reflections on being on the inside looking out and imagining rearranging furniture on the inside, rearranging the garden outside or just noticing insignificant moments and corners in the room. I have this need to document my surroundings. When my eyes land on a pile of books or a corner of my desk or whatever, I think about making a photograph to reproduce what my eyes are looking at…but the photo is always lacking and never the same as what I see with my eyes so I need to photograph again and again and again. I have so many more photos and I continue to make more. Like the airplane scrolls, I could wallpaper a room with them. Does the quantity, the repetition diminish the single image or does it convey time and a mood like Moira Davey’s videos and photos series?
I see how to plant a garden as a companion piece to the air I breath is the air you touch.
They offer contrasting perspectives; an aerial view and a grounded view; looking down and looking up but both from inside a confined/defined space