Landlines

The Landlines series was inspired by my life-long love of maps, geology and a fascination with the idea that as born story tellers, our first stories, are stories about how the land came to be as it is. Having lived in Ohio most of my life, then in Texas for a period of time before I settled in the Pacific Northwest, I was inspired to begin work on the Landlines series after a visit to Mt St Helens, a volcano that last erupted in 1980. Watching the sun set from a point high above the northern blast zone, as light spread over the wastelands beneath the shattered peak I noticed details of life, land and light I had not noticed before. Trees - lit bright green in side light. The long spindly shadows of foraging elk. Color variations in the ash and rock in the blast zone. A tangle of sinuous lines and shadows left by melt-water streams that continuously re-define the valley floor. Features and relationships that no guide, map or satellite view had foretold.

Leaving St. Helens that day, I thought of a term I had heard in Iceland, “Landvættir (lon-va-teer)” which roughly translates to “land spirit” or a “memory of the land”. Landvættir can be a living thing - such as an animal, or, as it relates to this work, can occupy the space of a rock, a volcano or, an entire continent. I thought about how we often generalize subjects whose scale challenges the limits of our faculties. Thought about how - what cannot be understood or recognized on a human scale is often, given over the abstraction. Mysteries that can shortchange us a deeper appreciation of how the parts interrelate and work together to create the whole. The images I had seen of St. Helens that were in wide views - made it a subject of the sky. Detailed images of St. Helens - seemed to relegate it to a curiosity - rote patterns found throughout the natural world. I wondered if I could find a middle ground. Wondered if I isolated where forces and features mix, if I might develop a better understanding of the land and the dynamics at work.

Using the camera to flatten scenes just as maps do, the works in this series bring landscape features and details into focus the way one might use a microscopic slide. A focus on the land as it might be understood as a system of feedback loops shaped by interactions with light, water, weather, geology and, the non-humans who call it home. Not as an abstraction, but as a series of meditations working to bring the complexity of the land together on human relatable scales. Not only the inanimate, but the living land; the sun drenching wheat crops on the Palouse Farm lands. Stories that that might help expand our vocabulary and better prepare us for the stories of the land - we have yet to tell.

*NOTE: Works in this series are only available for purchase via direct sale through Lance and his team. Please visit our Sales Page to begin a conversation on your favorite piece/s.

Water Map

As the layers of topographic map detail elevation changes, this formation in Capital Reef details the story of an ancient ocean, the sand and silt buried upon itself until it compressed. Lifted once more into the world, under harsh heat, summer monsoons and winds that stir the sands and cloak the rock in a state of constant friction, the sandstone scales and falls off in formations that mark the weaker boundaries of it original formations. Cast in light, the shadows, gradients of colors and forms appear not unlike those it once held.

Blast Zone
Ash piles, hummocks and new forest take up in the blast zone of Mt. St. Helens.
Painted Hills
As the the Painted Hills erode, they reveal layers from previous ecological and geologic epochs; each color, concentrated mineral content from the unearthed aeon.
Rainforest, Ocean, Sand and Wind
A piece of driftwood thrust into the ocean by spring floods is slowly buried in the shore of the Olympic Coast.
Mono Lake Tufa
Tufas, formed when calcium carbonate slowly collects below water is reshaped by new currents;the wind.

Studio 47.60° North

Landlines

"Memory is the fourth dimension to any landscape." ~Janet Fitch

Water Map

The Landlines series was inspired by my life-long love of maps, geology and a fascination with the idea that as born storytellers, our first stories always seem to be about how the land came to be as it is.

Loesses and Light

We often attribute mystique to the unknown land. A habit that shortchanges us the deeper sense of how the parts, work together to create the whole.

Grand Canyon Portal

Using the camera to flatten scenes just as maps do, the work in this series brings features and events into focus the way one might create a microscopic slide...

Blue Dragon Lava

Approaching the land in smaller parts working in relation to one another, a study in how light, weather, geology, wildlife, water and weather work together to create the land. Not as an abstraction, but a testament of the whole brought into sharp relief.