A Sparrow on the Floor of a Cathedral (ASFC) illuminates what is beneath the ocean’s surface, creating wonder and fostering interconnected-ness of aquatic ecosystems worldwide. The compositions in ASFC expose physical forces that shape the geologic forms and topography of the ocean floor. Here, I am the sparrow looking up through the water column into the virtuosity of nature’s cathedral, immersing the viewer beneath the waves.

Aquatic environments host natural resources which humans are actively extracting. Owing to their relative anonymity and inaccessibility, these frontiers have been portrayed as romantic,  mythical and untouched wildernesses. ASFC reveals an unknown realm, as boundless as the American west, both enticing for its beauty and jeopardized due to pollution, development and extraction of resources. The goal of this series is to create a pause, a collective inhale – for the audience to consider the ways in which their basic functions, relationships and understanding of the world may or perhaps should change after an other-worldly encounter with the deep.

Project developed with the support of a Marcella Brenner Grant from the Maryland Institute College of Art, which funded a research trip to research 19th century western landscape photographs at the the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, AZ.

Series of archival inkjet prints, 22” x 16.75”. Printed border with location and dive information
Each print is hand-embossed with the ASFC stamp, 1 3/4” diameter.