Artwork > Reclamation

Reclamation

While in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, I became fascinated with the bunkers dotting the landscape of the Marin Headlands. The coastal defense bunkers remain in a dilapidated form today – resting military monoliths in the now public lands of the National Park Service. Facing the persistent Pacific Ocean, the bunkers are slowly giving way to erosion.

Based in the history of landscape painting, but injected with remains of the complicated military history in the region, the paintings imagine the bunker’s further dissolution into the landscape and highlight their isolated and largely forgotten past. My interest in them is their former function as observation outposts: always on guard, looking out for a threat that never came. As objects of protection and defense they also carry the weight of militaristic control. For me, along with those dialogues, they are a metaphor for the artist – an active but stationary observer.

BCS, FT-FC, H88
Oil on canvas
60"x72"
2010
BES_FB-SG, BC B1
Oil on canvas
72"x72"
2010
BES_Battery Bluff_BD-FF
Oil on canvas
60"x72"
2010
Watchtower, FB-BA-PB
Oil on canvas
72"x60"
2010
Perimeter, BT-TP
Oil on canvas
72"x72"
2010
Gaurdpost, WR-H88
Oil on canvas
30"x30"
2010
BES, FF-BD
Oil on canvas
30"x30"
2010
Outpost
Oil on canvas
20"x24"
2010
Entrance, square
Oil on canvas
24"x24"
2010
Entrance, circle
Oil on canvas
24"x24"
2010
BES, WR
Watercolor on paper
22"x30"
2010
BES_Battery Bluff_BD-FF
Watercolor on paper
22"x30"
2010
Surrogate
Lumber, concrete, grass sod with sound of field recordings from the California coast
2010
Surrogate
Lumber, concrete, grass sod with sound of field recordings from the California coast
39"Hx60"Wx66"L
2010
Surrogate
Lumber, concrete, grass sod with sound of field recordings from the California coast
39"Hx60"Wx66"L
2010
Surrogate
Lumber, concrete, grass sod with sound of field recordings from the California coast
39"Hx60"Wx66"L
2010
Surrogate
(Design animation)
SketchUp Animation
2010
Reclamation
[Vimeo]
Single channel video
2009