-scape was made by a window one sunny afternoon, a few millimeters at a time. It took five hours to draw, some 2,230 frames. I did not take a break for the duration and focused my thoughts on the landscape here in California and in Iceland. I remembered lines of the coastline and glaciers, faults and lava fields. I thought about how I felt in these places and let my intuition guide my pen. I went back and forth across the paper until the drawing felt done. Then through the editing process I layered and inverted the images.
I was trying to chart an internal, emotional landscape... one formed from the memories of places I love. The moving line of -scape depicts how the emotions I notice while walking over land might appear on the inside with each step I take, much like how a seismograph charts an earthquake or an EKG records a heartbeat. I had been wondering what emotional responses in the body might look like if they were visible. I imagined they would appear a lot like the places we spend time in: the ups and downs of emotion reflecting the ups and downs of land.
When paired with the X-ray of Non Solus, a connection is made between the two pieces... and the animation can also be seen as a visual of the inter-workings of the silk thread connecting thousands of pearls.
To watch the animation, please visit this link.
Top two images by Phillip Maisel
