When seen in a pile, sand presents itself as uniformity: black sand, red sand, fine sand, coarse sand. But upon close inspection, even the most homogeneous manufactured sand disperses into individuality. When animated at this level of magnification, a single grain finds its own autonomy. We like to categorize and quantify, which is easy enough with inanimate objects. Numbers make it easy to pass judgement and pass policies. But when a grain of sand is animated, it reveals its inner motivation and we catch a glimpse of its story. It transforms into an unquantifiable encasement of life.

Each work in this collection explores an angle of the social and political systems in which the individual can be lost in the abstractness of the group. The light sculptures offer a tangible presence which can be inspected in an intimate setting, while the accompanying video are a meditation on the life within each grain of sand. 

The Klondike Letters Project is a public art project in collaboration with Klondike Goldrush International Historic Park.  From June 25 thru July 7, 2012, I hiked the historic Chilkoot Trail as an artist-in-residence. During that 2 week period, I asked my fellow travelers to write a postcard to themselves as they hiked over the historic Chilkoot Pass from Alaska to the Yukon. The 174 postcards, along with sound recordings and my drawings from the trail, formed a collective memory portrait of the Chilkoot Trail. One year later, when the words and images of that journey had lost their sharpness and faded in the mind, I mailed those postcards to the writers as a vibrant catalyst for our memories of the Chilkoot.

From July 5 thru July 9, 2016, I hiked the trail again bringing a box of fresh postcards in the hopes of establishing an ongoing project. With the help of trail rangers and hut wardens from the National Parks Service and Parks Canada, we collected over 742 postcards in 2016, 1274 postcards in 2017, and over 1700 in 2018! Unfortunately the pandemic brought an end to the project in 2020. Learn more and read postcards on klondikeletters.com

 

On a deeper level, this project is about why we seek out places of wildness and what we experience there. Though the stampeders were seeking gold in the Klondike wilderness, the vast majority didn’t find their fortune. From their letters and diaries, we can see they did find other things: adventure, suffering, love, an insight into human nature at its best and worst. It’s a long journey to get to the Klondike. What do you find in this place that you can’t experience in your daily life, what moment is going to change your life in some small but hopefully significant way? Ultimately, this is what makes these places worth preserving.

Bay Bingo is a large-scale projection created for and exhibited at the Light City Baltimore Festival in collaboration with artist Kelley Bell. The whimsical animated work draws parallels between the fragile ecosystem and recent regeneration of the Chesapeake Bay and its landmark city, Baltimore, Maryland.

Subsequent commissioned versions of the work were created for the Great South Bay, in Patchogue NY, and Corpus Christi Bay in Texas.

Learn more about our City, our Bay, and the fish featured in Bay Bingo in our online Limerick Field Guide. As you watch the piece, play our mobile bingo game. The first to find 4 fish in a row, wins!

Exhibitions

Light City Baltimore
28 March – 3 April, 2016
Columbus Center, Baltimore, MD

Animafest goes MSU
21 May – 9 June, 2016
Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, Croatia

MoCA L.I.ghts
5-8 November, 2020
Bargain Bilge Facade, Patchogue, NY

underCurrent
18 September –  1 December 2023
CCBC Essex, MD

 

 

 

Video, 2017
Individual grains of sand take on new life as they dance to a joyful percussion interlude.
All animation was done by hand, frame by frame, under the camera. Shot on a Nikon D810 with a 200mm macro lens. 

Animation by: Corrie Francis Parks (corriefrancis.com/)
Music by: Alexandra Gardner (alexandragardner.net/)
Performed by: Percussions de Barcelona

Video, 2013
A lone fish, hooked by an angler's line, encounters another in the same dire situation. As the two fish struggle against their fate, they develop an inevitable, entangling attraction. Is it love or merely a will to survive?

This vibrant, underwater world showcases a revolutionary approach to sand animation.  Animated in sand with watercolor backgrounds,  the 3600 frames of the film are a seamless blend of traditionally handcrafted imagery and digital painting. The technique involves moving sand on a backlit plate of glass, creating silhouetted animation that is captured frame-by frame. Each drawing is destroyed in the process of creating the next, so at the end of the process there remains only a pile of sand. Through the art of compositing and motion design, it is the first film to expand the black and white aesthetic of traditional sand animation to include vibrant color and cinematic movement.  

Love is a slippery business. Some will point to the heavens or chance as the source of our relationships, while others plow forward on the strength of self-determination. Either way, there is pain intertwined with a growing attraction, and the survival of a relationship depends on the perseverance of the lovers. In "A Tangled Tale", the fisherman’s line becomes an enigmatic metaphor for a fate and attraction, leading us to consider what is the source of our love and where it will ultimately take us.