I am so pleased to have been awarded an NAC grant 2025, The funded, in part, project is Still Life with Technology.
'On behalf of the staff and board of the Nevada Arts Council please accept my congratulations on your Fiscal Year 2025 Grant Award. The Nevada Arts Council strives to support the remarkable work of Nevada’s arts industry in communities throughout the state.
The agency’s ability to provide funding through our grants program is just one of the ways that the Nevada Arts Council is here for you.'
From Charlie Chaplain’s questioning of the machine in the film ‘Modern Times’ to Umberto Boccioni’s exhilarating ideals about technology’s possibilities ‘modern-day’ artists have created a vital and powerful dialog about the impact of technology from the beginning of the industrial revolution. I want to present a body of work that continues to reference that legacy of storytelling. I want to create work that has an impact on those who view it, enabling them to continue to question the role of technology in society.
My continuing fascination with technology is the inspiration for this ‘Still Life with Technology’ project. Technology is the application of science by us as human beings, to ease, prolong, or take life. I want to engender a sense of wonder and achievement in the incredible expertise we have in the creation of, for example, nuclear power, the Internet, or the Hoover Dam; there is a thrill to the subject matter, almost a feeling of excitement and foreboding in terms of its scale and function. I want to reflect this feeling of awe by creating 4 large-scale material panels. I also want to encompass the incredible ironies that the technology we develop often has, as multiple applications emerge from the same basic science, some are without doubt amazing, and some are utterly awful. Take centrifugal force as an example - it is possible to juxtapose a cotton candy machine with IR-4 gas centrifuges, that are used to enrich uranium, both use centrifugal force.
I have also been inspired by an Olivia Erlanger exhibition: ‘If Today Were Tomorrow’, - The Contemporary Arts Museum, in Houston I visited last year. Erlanger explores living in a world where fundamental technologies have broken down (e.g. tap has running sand rather than water, where life can no longer be supported reliably with basic utilities like electricity and water. I want to expand the imagery and symbolism I use in the form of drawings and subsequently make 4 large-scale material panels that will be displayed both in real life but also in virtual reality in June 2025.
I will research and capture imagery from factories, and industrial installations to explore the different applications of specific scientific methodologies and present or juxtapose their applied uses. To summarize – I will create 4 large-scale panels that visualize the dichotomy technology presents, and the questions society should be asking. I will portray technological equipment as compelling, and often beautiful in terms of its structure and complexity, while at the same time, questioning what we use it for, and how we have evolved some to feed us, and some to kill us.
