Processional

Expanding on the concepts and foundation outlined in Duality, the Processional series approached watercolor and ink on paper as materials of animation. Lighter materials made process more obvious and stop motion photography of the paintings over time resulted in video clips tha were subsequently digitally manipulated into installation content. The video clips were treated digitally, as opposed to the raw, unaltered visual content presented in Duality, creating a stark contrast between the physical pages from which they emerged.

Processional arose from a desire to explore the tension between what is accepted as physical fine art and its counterpart in digital video. Unifying the two elements into a whole series, as with Duality, added strength to the overall concept of two separate mediums representing the same body of work. Transferring a concept from encaustic painting to watercolor served to enhance the idea and developed a heightened sense of how mediums opposite in nature can coexist, becoming greater as a sum than either could embody alone.

Once enough stop-motion clips ad been assembled, the imagery was brought into a live TV studio at Columbia College Chicago, where a production team assisted in a live cut against a green screen. The result prompted several remixes and a live performance in the Spring of 2009 in downtown Chicago. Eventually the work would be re-exhibited in the fall of the same year in Artprize, Grand Rapids, MI, including interactive control setups.

This project is ongoing, as stop-motion clips continue to be gathered and experiments with new combinations of matierials persists. In the latest additions to this series stretched linen, oil, and watercolor have been incorporated into methods that yield rich surface variations when the opposing materials collide. The photography as paintings develop is now captured with an iPhone where they are sequenced as before in After Effects. Despite the materials and process being altered over time, stop motion animation and an underlying sense of experimentation unite this series in its conceptual framework.