Land Arts of the American West: Mikala Sterling

Showing posts with label Mikala Sterling. Show all posts

November 24, 2017

Human time/Plant time

By Mikala Sterling

White Sands National Monument, NM

October 30, 2017

hung out with this shadow for most of my work time at White Sands:

…very interested in using timelapse to capture motions of light and shadow to reveal a passage of time and challenge or question an understanding of a human perspective of plant time and a plant perspective of human time.

I was able to piece together footage over the span of three days to cover a shadow cycle from 8:30 am to 7:00 pm – finally able to show a longer duration of time change, much more successful than my project at the Gila, luckily!

November 13, 2017

Bad footage

By Mikala Sterling

Gila Wilderness, NM

October 23, 2017

Trying to piece together a full day’s worth of shadow and light material footage by working in shifts (due to battery limitations).

*project faces NE - clear skies all days

sun shines through cliffs/tress making shadow footage very variable and very ephemeral

…

I had one minute of total timelapse material by the end of the week, which was not entirely successful in telling an “8-5 plant’s workday story” – lots of choppy/fast footage, alas.

November 4, 2017

Slow the water, retain sediment, allow recovery

By Mikala Sterling
Patagonia, AZ
October 22, 2017

We camped in an old school yard and spent the week learning and working with the
Borderlands Restoration group. The end of the week culminated in working
together to build rock walls on a very steep hill to potentially slow erosion and
rehabilitate the space.

A few notes/thoughts from our week in Patagonia:
“work in anticipating the unraveling of land”
“What are our roles as ethical creatures?”
“put your body where your ethics are”
“how we mark space to create and represent meaning over time”
“understanding – across space”
“deep hanging out – spending time with a space”
“reading the landscape”
“heals as an empathetic entity”

October 28, 2017

Watch for mystery monster shadow growth in the right-hand corner

By Mikala Sterling

Muley Point, Bears Ears National Monument, UT

October 2, 2017

Monday

Have returned to my “documentary” site to work on another time-lapse.

Rather impressed and entranced by the small ecosystem functioning in-between these rocks, growing so peacefully, maybe seems relatively inactive, but certainly is not!!

The shadow as an elusive client…

3 hour shadow map: shows patterns that we are unaware of even if we are sitting right there the whole time! Shadows show time passing, mystery growths, changes and movement. Shadows are ephemeral, can’t hold them, have a physical presence but are not tangible…how do you capture them? How do you capture light?