inspiration

open studio: apocalypse of the heart /  by kelly heaton

Apocalypse of the Heart, 2016.  Digital photo collage. Kelly Heaton

In case you're wondering why the flurry of blogging, I am once again bedridden - this time, with a bad cough and malaise.  I'm sketching ideas on my computer, so it's not all bad.  In case you're wondering why the cheesy apocalyptic image: I am obsessed with human impact on the planet and it makes me awfully depressed, but I am determined to cure myself with humor and beauty.  As a child of the 70's, there's nothing dearer to my heart than a technicolor view of life, especially where love and nature are concerned.  Admittedly, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is a product of the '80s, but the shoe fits.

open studio: climate turner /  by kelly heaton

Climate Turner, 2016.  Digital photocollage (sketch) using trash, smog, wires, electronic components and the composition of J. W. Turner's painting "Peace - Burial at Sea," from 1842.

open studio: a voice crying in the wilderness /  by kelly heaton

A voice crying in the wilderness.  Digital photo collage (sketch), 2016.  Kelly Heaton

Human population is skyrocketing along with our impact on planet earth: smog, loss of natural habitat, loss of diversity, global spread of invasive pests, deforestation, exploitation of natural resources, landfills, toxic waste, garbage in the ocean, death of coral reefs, pesticides everywhere, crowded cities, escalating competition for resources, drought, soil erosion, ... the list goes on. Because our numbers are so many, even small or unintended actions add up to a big problem: eating seafood or beef, burning wood or coal, drinking bottled water, disposable packaging, pissing medication into the water supply, driving a car, and so on.  A manmade solution to population growth is not obvious, which is to say, no ethical solution has materialized.  It appears that we are on a collision-course with nature's solution to excessive population: death by bottleneck.  Surely there is an alternative.  Surely we can all agree to be a little more reasonable, if that means to save our kind?  Or are our natural instincts to reproduce, and to compete for resources, so strong that we cannot save ourselves?

open studio: electronic sculpture garden /  by kelly heaton

One my early studies for a sculpture garden that blends nature, electronics and people.  Kelly Heaton, November 2015

As usual, I am working on several projects in parallel.  My mind refuses to stay contained within a discipline or focused on a single task for more than a few days (or a few hours)... so I no longer try.  Anyway, it seems that everyone is becoming "attention multiplexed." 

As we enter into the Anthropocene, the era in which human activity shapes the geologic history of Earth, the distinction between nature and technology is increasingly blurry.  Nature has an ecology, electronics have an architecture, and both are systems for the distribution of energy.  The merging of living systems fascinates me.  

One of my new projects is to design a grand garden that is modeled after a circuit board, to weave landscape architecture and electrical engineering into a functional, natural circuit.  The sculptures in the garden will be human-scale electronic devices, enabling visitors to "meet" technology face-to-face, and to walk the pathways within the circuit.  Some elements of the garden will be formal, recalling classic electrical engineering on the tidy green "lawn" of a printed circuit board.  Wilder areas of the garden will play with nature and technology as (a)live, interconnected, and dissolving into one and other over time.  I love the idea of trees building a subterranean circuit with their roots; soil churning with chemical, fungal and animal messengers; vines growing over electronics like unruly wires; cisterns that collect water from the sky, feeding channels and powering kinetic mobiles; and shrines that worship Gods of Power, be it natural or manmade.

pollinators: 1st look into my new hives /  by kelly heaton

Beehive 1 of 2, started from a nuc of locally raised bees in Spring of 2014. Video was shot in early June 2014 (through the smaller, rear entrance).

The Queen of hive 2 of 2

Various images of frames in my new hives, both 1 and 2.  Beautiful!