My 2008 print and interactive tactile piece Tree Series was inspired by Gaston Bachelard, who in The Poetics Of Space speaks of looking differently at our most intimate surroundings by bringing a poetic sensitivity to the spaces that we inhabit. Through the use of a poetic rather than a rational lens, Bachelard enables spaces — ones to which we have become so intimately accustomed — to literally open up before our eyes. He writes: “Even if the ‘form’ was already well-known, previously discovered, carved from ‘commonplaces,’ before the interior poetic light was turned upon it, it was a mere object for the mind. But the soul comes and inaugurates the form, dwells in it, takes pleasure in it.”
Tree Series combines photographs of a single tree to create a novel visual phenomenon. Previously easily-identifiable tree branches become webs of symmetrical fine lines of ambiguous forms suggesting recognizable silhouettes much like those found within the forms of clouds. I fashioned these images into multi-layered tactile pieces which when moved reveal constantly evolving forms. This interactive experience highlights the unlimited visual potential realized by changing one’s practice of looking. As Bachelard wrote, “poetry appears as a phenomenon of freedom”.
