SHELLS

 

Sea shells have held an eternal fascination for many cultures.  No other natural history object, it could be argued, has more thoroughly gratified our human impulse to collect beautiful items from a world beyond our own.  They are the jade and diamonds of the sea.  Frank Lloyd Wright once described them as the housing "with exactly what we lack, inspired form." SHELLS is an original video art installation (with companion book planned).  Four 9ft x 16ft projections of shells and beaches and text, one on each of four walls of a room, explore a 1940 vision for how an "ordinary man's" life might be improved by the oil business, in light of strong feelings for shells and the sea... and the lifetime consumption of fossil fuel and its many derivatives (plastics, drugs, etc.) that underlie most human lives in the 20th and 21st centuries.