The Mote and the Beam
Site specific installation at the City Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Using hundreds of threads of bone-white yarn, I am connecting the planes of the walls and articulating the negative space between them. I am exploring mass and emptiness, the occupation of space and yet invisibility. The word 'mote' translates from the Greek word for speck, or particle of dust, and in filling the space with white fiber, I am emulating dust in suspended accumulation. The fibrous edges of the tensioned lines of yarn visually blur the space around them, creating a hyperreal effect of the camera eye. It is a low tech simulation of the effect of the advances in visual media on the way we now see with the naked eye. How we interpret what we see is constantly adjusting to the output of our technology. The act upon the perception and physical experience of the viewer are mirrored in the form of the installation -the eye as a penetrated void. While I'm not referring to the biblical implications of the parable of the mote and the beam directly, I am exploiting the words for their evocative imagery as well as appealing to its gesture of relative perception.
