Static Electricity (2008 - 2018)

My winters in Vermont were long and hard. But there were moments of magic. Wool-clad feet shuffled across carpets, children kissed, and tiny sparks flew. Winter’s electricity was all around us—invisible, mysterious, and ever-present.

Nearly a century ago, Surrealist artists and writers understood that sparks could fly when unlikely objects and ideas collide. They drew inspiration from the idea of chance encounters, like the famous meeting of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table. They used this technique of unlikely juxtapositions to dive beneath the surface of the physical world and explore cosmic questions of life and death, of love and desire.

In my diptych series Static Electricity, my paired images explore matter and mystery, with tiny sparks flying between them as they make contact.