The Color of Memory: Sublime Gestures

Sublime Gestures, like the other work in the Color of Memory series, flips the perspective to create distortions in the relationship of color and movement. The Sublime Gestures examine the importance of movement and time to our perceptions of the landscape, while simultaneously stressing the beauty of that movement. They also investigate the American National Park aesthetic, specifically capturing the movement of nature and the cycling of light. Edmund Burke, who pioneered the aesthetic theory of the sublime, thought that the sublime referred to that which cannot be contained. By referencing the sublime in this series, I hope to speak to the feelings of awe and wonder of the United States’ National Parks. Through the use of the National Park motif, I explore a de-sensitized relationship to the sublime landscape. Sublime Gestures places the camera explicitly at the photographic lookout points as designed by the National Park Service and the many artists who have created in the Parks before me. I was interested in the collective memory of a place and wanted to use the surprising color of this process to wake it up and give it new energy. Sublime Gestures was created at the following National Parks: Big Bend National Park, Denali National Park, Crater Lake National Park, Glacier National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Grand Tetons National Park, Muir Woods National Park, Olympic National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite National Park, and White Sands National Park.