Coup D’oeil (Boreas)

Sundowner chronicles the wind billowing in and out of strips of a photograph of the sky like a broken sail. The image is both deformed and reformed by the atmosphere it references. The grid installation emphasizes both the infinite variability in energy, timing, and the direction of air currents, as well as the steady fade of evening light into night. Coup D’Oeil (Boreas), a two channel video documents a north wind moving through two cut images of sky, one facing north and the other south, the air first entering, then exiting a skyscape. The sound component is a collaboration with mezzo soprano Rebecca Comerford and explores the effect of wind, breath and voice, three manifestations of vibrating air, moving through and animating both the atmosphere and the human body and back again. The French term coup d’oeil translates to “stroke of the eye.” It attributes an unexpected tactility to the sense of sight and is defined as “a glance that takes in a comprehensive view.” The side by side imagery is recorded simultaneously, and each pulled from the opposite cardinal direction, thereby visualizing the energetic and ceaseless feel of wind moving through the viewer’s point of view. The voice reverberates in unison with her environmental context and pushes the limits of a single breath of air to its fullest physical and expressive effect.