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
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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.
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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?"
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. |
