Visions and Vistas

After scuba diving for the first time, I experienced a new world under the ocean, and this changed my perception of other vistas.  Seeing the mountains of the Mojave Desert from an airplane after my scuba experience, I envisioned them under water.  The colors of the mountains reminded me of the coral reefs and the sandy bottom of the ocean; the blue sky above the desert reminded me of the clear warm water. One of the images has what appears to be a small mound of earth in the middle of a clearing.  This mountain reminded me of stingrays burying themselves beneath the sand.  I repeatedly saw these formations in Palm Springs and San Diego.

Both seaweed photographs describe the negative space that defines the positive space (mountains).  The ocean breathed in and out, leaving behind clusters of thick slimy seaweed that reminded me of the striations I saw when looking down at the desert from thousands of feet in the air.  Further along the beach, I stumbled upon a stretch of dried out seaweed.  It had an undulating pattern that reminded me of the paths around the mountains.  The seaweed photographs play with the scale of the collection as a whole. Curvatures of land, shadows, and colors now have new associations.