The show has three elements: Polyopticon VII is an architectually specific camera obscura installation (behind the curtains seen in the background). The Orbis Obscurus works are free standing video sculptures in a group in the middle of the space. Four video loops related to architectural optics complete the show (seen below).

The front of the New American Art Union gallery is transformed into an optical environment by lightproof curtains that double as projection surface. Polyopticon VII is an optical reconfiguration of the landscape immediately outside the gallery: The interior of the camera obscura is illuminated by several lenses projecting natural light onto the walls and floor. The imagery is a live, reflecting the weather, wind, and traffic outside. The eyes gradually adjust to the low light in the space- after 20 minutes, the details become richer, deeper, more colorful.

The Orbis Obscurus pieces complement the camera obscura related works. They come from a similar interest in basic optics and themes of illusion and representation that have historically accompanied novel optical developments. They function as well to conceptually darken the physically dark project by taking on themes of violence and disaster.

Three walls of the irregular space are projection surfaces. Soft seating allows viewers to spend time absorbing the gradually increaswing detail around them. In addition, a fourth lens projects the sky directly overhead onto the floor where clouds slowly drift under foot.

Orbis Obscurus is a group of four video sculptures. Involuting whorls of imagery appear to gyrate in blue space on the horizontal screens. On each television’s surface a cylindrical mirror provides another view of the swirl, resolving it into a flight over an earthly landscape. Each journey is related to historical and literary episodes and ideas that hold a place in my imagination. They each have to do with the ominous side of the darkness, the obscurus, the shadow in this project.

The four wall mounted video loops are compositions produced within camera obscura installations. They are studies of interior space with a kind of collage of elements from the outdoor landscape. They sharpen and refine some of the aesthetic issues that interest me in my work with architectural optics. They also distill aspects of the isolation or sequestering implicit in such spaces.

The flyovers were generated digitally using geographic data and satellite images. The visualization process used to create this virtual “gods’ eye” view is connected to the camera obscura’s formation of images on planes in space, and on another level to finding the vantage point of privilege where the curved mirror reflects the image correctly, solving and resolving the puzzle.

From the right angle and distance, the moving landscape is visible in the reflection. This piece, Yuma Crossing, imagines a crucial and climactic episode in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian: an attack on disputed ferry crossing on the Colorado River near present day Yuma Arizona in 1849. Survivors make their way west to San Diego and the ocean.