Monthly Statement:
February 2006
I have some good news to share… In March I will be presenting my artist book project, “Brief Notes on Existence,” that is part of my contribution to Accumulation Project at the Society for Photographic Education national conference in Chicago. I’ll be talking up OLB and Accumulation Project so come on by if anyone is in the neighborhood.

Here is the website for SPE with all the information necessities: www.spenational.org

February was a productive month. I was able to obtain access to a site for an “official” cleaning and also subversively nabbed dust from another site while out of town.

The first place from which I obtained dust was the National Weather Service’s southern Arizona office. Since a final stage of my accumulation activities involves making little images of clouds out of the dust I collect, I have wanted to clean a site that is actively involved in predicting and forecasting weather. After a failed attempt at gaining access to a TV station weather room I approached the National Weather Service and spoke with the Meteorologist-In-Charge, Glenn Sampson, about the project and my interest in any hard-surface floors in their facility. Of course this conversation came only after I spent a long-feeling couple of minutes convincing the receptionist that I wasn’t crazy or part of the daytime custodial staff. Glenn, genuinely interested in what I was interested in, led me to a room where megalith super-computers were collecting, organizing and relaying millions of bits of meteorological information. Honestly, it looked like any sort of office-like environment until I began asking more about the function of the computers and Glenn offered up something beautiful. “We’re surrounded by a lot of weather in here.” Standing amongst the plastic, humming towers bathed in fluorescent light was the one place where weather did seem even more present than standing on the deck of small boat in the middle of the sea during a thunderstorm. The day we agreed upon for me to come back ended up being President’s Day so the offices were closed and I made plans to visit the following day. I decided to not believe in the weather forecast for that Monday as I assumed it would be Sunday’s leftovers. Sweeping the site on Tuesday went faster than I had imagined. There were air vents in the floor of the room that kept things pretty tidy so my bounty was less than I expected in terms of dust, but I did seem to rid their floor of various washers, screws and a bunch of plastic wire ties (debris from room arranging I was told later). The dust I did get seemed very universal in appearance as though it was some sort of average of all the dust bunnies I’ve managed to collect thus far. I’m still waiting for it to form into a line of blue chevrons and animate on cue.

The second site from which I gathered dust was from two locations in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I was in Boston for the big CAA annual conference and made the customary trip to the museum as I’d never been to the MFA or to Boston before. As I was picking up my belongings from the coat check I spied a little clump of dust on the floor just below and to the left of the counter. With such a line of people immediately behind me I was a little self-conscious about grabbing it, but picked it up nonetheless since I figured it would have some patient qualities to it and it was surely made over a long, long period of time. As I was gearing up for my wintry walk outside I noticed a huge clump directly behind this statue of “Medea” who appeared to be attracting blue, industrial laundry carts from either side. I added it to the coat check dust and walked out knowing that there were no golden specks in the dust and also hoping that Medea wasn’t married to this clump of dust.

Process: I plan to acquire dust in two ways. Initially, I will ask for permission to sweep a chosen site and document the process. If permission is not granted or if I find myself in a place that seems to be an interesting opportunity for gathering dust, I will then obtain my accumulate in a covert fashion. This means I will inconspicuously search for dust clumps on the spot and document the site, rather than the process.

I will be gathering dust from two different places a month as my contribution to the Accumulation Project. From each bag of dust I obtain I’ll manipulate the dust bunny into different shapes and make a series of photograms on cyanotype paper. As the dust bunny assumes this new pictorial form, it takes of the appearance of a cloud in a deep blue sky and subtly forms a connection between a nuisance remainder of human existence and the ephemeral behavior of the weather overhead. Each series of “clouds” will be placed into a book that I’ve assembled specifically for that place.

Contact: sekondsight@yahoo.com