Ocean, Forest, Mountain, Stars
2019
Collaboration with Coco Allred.
From June 28 to July 4, 2019, Coco and I made a road trip down the California coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles. We visited National Parks, tourism hotspots, and other sites of historical significance for California and the United States.
From where do we look?
From what vantage points are we viewing from?
What impact does vantage have on the way space is mapped, documented and colonized?
These are a few of the questions that guided our trip, and our book documents four sites that direct our gaze in different directions. Ocean refers to the Pacific Ocean. Forest refers to the Redwood Forest. Mountain refers to Mount Diablo. Stars refers to the Griffith Observatory.
Ocean, Forest, Mountain, Stars ruminates on how each of these so-called frontiers have been historicized, romanticized, and claimed.
This project was funded by the C.G. Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan Summer Travel Fellowship, Carnegie Mellon School of Art.
"The anthrophobia at the heart of the idea of unpeopled wilderness becomes the xenophobia at the heart of the idea of home, identifying and excluding the figure of the true foreigner."
Margret Grebowicz, The National Park to Come (2015)