Current Investigations

Something I like to think about on my own time is the relationship to seeing as a human with eyes, and seeing as a photographer through a lens onto either physical film, or a digital reconstruction of light particles that hit a sensor (working, technically, much like light-sensitive film).  

On the fourth and topmost floor of RISD’s Metcalf Studios, in Room 401, the Glass Department has amassed a treasure-hoard of silicate-based samples for study in a long narrow vitrine. As part of the Graduate Glass Studios, the Graduate classes of ’19 & ’20 have begun to organize, catalogue, research, and write about the objects in the vitrine collection. This first installment focuses on some naturally occurring forms of glass: obsidian, fulgurites, and moldavites.

The idea of the shift in scales of seeing affecting our perception of what we see is multi-disciplinary one. O’Doherty here talks about a distinction between vertical shifts of scale and horizontal ones. He doesn’t argue for or against truth (or a truth.) His departing spacecraft of History places time, when dealt with at a macro scale, as a vertical axis.

Over the Spring semester I began experimenting with laser engraving on sand. The process began without any expectations of what would come out of it — I just liked the idea of shooting a laser into a new material. I had a plenty of experience using a laser-cutter, but mainly with thin sheets of wood, mdf, cardboard, and metal. In this case I was putting in much larger, three-dimensional blocks of sand. This meant that I had to teach myself new settings to input into the machine: how do I focus onto a 3D surface? What power and speed do I use? And what will happen to the sand?

Studying this book is a full body exercise. The act of reading is becoming an illustration of bones and joints and muscles and skin. I focus on the tension in the muscles of my arm as I slip the book out of its box, on the soft cushion of my palm as I carry it to the table, on the texture of my fingertips as I touch the pages.