Stardust

When we look up at the night sky, millions of stars are arranged in familiar patterns amid layers of stardust. The unmistakable pull; strange and familiar, constant yet fragile.

Stardust is two parts, earth and sky. Photographic images were collected from the book “Living Trees of The World”.  

The subjects were black and white photos of trees taken in the 1960s by photographers: Joseph Muench, Union Pacific Railroad, Andreas Feininger, Rolf Blomberg, Bill Stackhouse, Janet Finch, Emil Javorsky and Max Hemple. 

While all too many subjects of nature photographs have gone extinct, and the photographic equipment used then is near obsolete, the trees captured in these photos are still with us, for now. The images as orbs are fragile and small, asking us to consider the role of caretaker.

Glass beads of different colors were put in a large bowl to select randomly, then arranged into eight constellations, Cassiopeia, Libra, Aquila, Corvus, Gemini, Pegasus, Cancer and Scutum.

Tethered by earth and sky

“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness.” Kahlil Gibran