I hope you read my “exhaustive” statement last week. It’s what I call my “personal” or “internal” statement. A working statement, written for me to read and think about. It’s the first time I’ve ever shared that kind of thing. I’m trying to allow people that are interested, to learn about my process of making a body of work. And the artist’s statement is the cornerstone of the narrative or story.
This is my “viewer’s” statement (below). The first draft, anyway. It’s synthesized, condensed, and easy to read. It still makes all of the points I want to make about the work but leaves some mystery in it. I want the photographs to “fill in the blanks” and make sense based on these words.
This is my statement for “In the Shadow of Sun Mountain”.
(Post Script: Drex Brooks was one of my undergraduate professors at Weber State University. He was working on this book when I was in the photo program there. It greatly influenced me.)
In The Shadow of Sun Mountain (Tava Kaavi)
“By taking this land for granted, we’ve anesthetized ourselves to history…we live in a state of blunted feeling, capable of cheerful indifference when we visit land once steeped in human agony. Contemplating this indifference can be, at first, infuriating. Americans ought to know what acts of violence brought them their right to own land, build homes, use resources, and travel freely in North America. Americans ought to know what happened on the ground they stand on; they surely have some obligation to know where they are”.
In the book, “Sweet Medicine” by Drex Brooks, 1995.
I live in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado - just west of Sun Mountain (Tava). I live on the land where the Ute/Tabeguache spent their summer months for hundreds of years before the white man came to this continent.
These photographs represent a profound feeling that’s rooted in the land and the past. They represent how it feels to live on this land and my relationship to the history of this place.
Every image contains something that is symbolic of the past and present. Every image shows the beauty and horror of the past and present, too. They show my struggle with all of it. And I’ve connected all of it through the materials and processes that I used to make the photographs.
There’s a part of me that’s in conflict with this land. Its history weighs on me. I’ve made these images to address these conflicts in some psychological way. Through making the work, I’ve tried to resolve some of the questions that burden me.
When people see these photographs, and learn about why they were made, I hope it will remind them about what happened here. I want them to feel the loss, appreciate the beauty, and to understand their obligation to never let these kinds of things happen again.