Totems

Totems - Any entity that watches over or assists a group of people, culture, family, clan, or tribe.

Totem Poles – May symbolize identity, kinship, unity, shared meaning, and history – their meaning being as varied as the cultures that make them.

Accident of Birth - Reference to the fact that various benefits or detriments to the life of a person arise from the circumstances into which that person was born, these being entirely beyond his or her control.

"Totems" is now showing at Space Gallery in Denver. It features 22 large portraits in a variety of arrangements including vertically stacked canvases arranged as totem poles.

This exhibit also includes a video presentation entitled "Accident of Birth". This video features computer-driven randomly selected images of my drawings. If you look at them as a group, each of the portraits influences and is influenced by the other portraits in a given frame. In the abstract, the groupings present symmetry and rhythm based on the repetition of similar compositions. The random reordering of these images casts a new overall composition with an altogether different rhythm and movement.

Metaphorically, this video explores identity and how we are viewed by others relative to the group that we are part of at any particular moment. It reflects how we are affected by others and how we in-turn influence them. It also explores the notion of chance in life - chance regarding the people that we randomly come in contact with and how they influence, redirect or transform our life.


I believe that at its most basic level, random chance encounters determine or influence where and how we live, what we do to secure a better life, which side of the border we were born and more.
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