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David Parker – Enskyment   
Summer 2014 - Summer 2015 at Street Road Artists' Space
Fall 2015 - at The Christiana Motel in partnership with Street Road Artists' Space

Enskyment 
David Parker 
​2015 - Ongoing 
David writes: "The “Enskyment” series of photographs continues my engagement with life’s brevity as a way to appreciate the precious little time we do have. The project involves a life-cast of my head, composed of sunflower seeds and gelatin. Upon it I train a camera that takes photographs in response to movement, documenting the reduction of the sculpture by birds – in effect, the conversion of matter to air. The resulting photographs are edited minimally, or not at all. The camera is not very sophisticated, and has a quirk such that sometimes birds in motion are rendered in strange ways. I enjoy these odd artifacts that result from an imprecise process. The title is borrowed from a Robinson Jeffers poem (below).  Our body exists as an assembly of materials gathered from outside of ourselves. For me, these images prompt several questions.  What happens when we imagine our body being dispersed back again?  Is the barrier between our body and the rest of the world so clearly defined?  Is willful submission to nature's processes in fact a chance at immortality? And perhaps most importantly: given that life is short, what should I be doing now?"
David A. Parker's Enskyment  features a sculpture made of birdseed that is a cast of the artist’s head. A motion sensing camera takes photos of birds that stop by for a meal, capturing the process of the sculpture being taken into the sky.
Vulture by Robinson Jeffers
I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling
high up in heaven,
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit narrowing,
I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-feathers
Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer.
I could see the naked red head between the great wings
Bear downward staring. I said, "My dear bird, we are wasting time here.
These old bones will still work; they are not for you." But how beautiful
he looked, gliding down
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the sea-light
over the precipice. I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten by that beak
and
become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes--
What a sublime end of one's body, what and enskyment; what a life
after death.

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A word about 'here':
We acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands of the Lenape, original people of the mid-Atlantic area, forced west by British and US governments. Most Delaware Indian tribe descendents are now located in Oklaholma, Wisconsin, and Ontario. Lenni Lenapes in Pennsylvania are not officially recognized as tribes by the United States, though an estimated 5000 Lenape Nation descendents live in the Delaware River area. We pay respects to the Lenape people both past and present. Please consider the many legacies of violence, displacement and settlement that form part of our collective histories. While increased public recognition of these legacies and processes of redress such as Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission are positive steps, concrete focus on return of land and land rights remains a distant horizon.
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