SHERRY ERSKiNE & IGUANA COLLABORATIVE

Erskine + Stein, RELAY—DELAY, 2022, [13 min 10 sec], digital video, USA.

Director’s Statement:

RELAY–DELAY began as a project for Art in Odd Places Festival 2021 in New York City, which prompted artists to investigate the idea of normalcy during the pandemic. Their call for artists presented a quote from Sonya Renee Taylor stating, “We will not go back to normal. Normal never was.” During this time of quarantine and social political unrest, we existed between survival and an uncertain tomorrow. People and the environment suffered many tangible losses in 2020. It was a dark time of the imagination, requiring a greater understanding of our limitations and grief. The pandemic also created a heightened need to hope and imagine a better future. Hence, we set to nature to explore interconnectedness and dream. Living and working in isolation 800 miles apart, our collaboration existed solely within an intermediary digital 3rd space for nearly 2 years. Through performative acts of ‘active imagination’ we began recording, sharing and responding to each other’s videos and soundtracks on Dropbox in a relay pen-pal structure. The first two relays were inspired by events during the US electoral process in January 2021: the State of Georgia Senatorial runoff, the capital insurrection, and the presidential inauguration. Filmed through December 2021, our series of 14 individual videos uncover several unstable emotional states of being. Our wrapped body forms depict feelings ranging from the anxiety and sorrow of witnessing destruction, to a sense of oneness with the earth and its life forces. Our film invites viewers to find beauty, healing and unity in nature.

Performers, directors: Sherry Erskine & Bonnie Sue Stein

Editor: Sherry Erskine

Producer: Bonnie Sue Stein

Sonic Consultation: John K Erskine

Viewing available On Demand through Aesthetica Short Film Festival until November 30, 2022: https://www.asff.co.uk/tickets/

2021, Collaborative Portraiture

RELAY–DELAY Series of videos, photographs and banners examines concepts of isolation and normalcy during the pandemic. Our video series began in January 2021 across 800 miles from Holland, Michigan to Hudson Valley, New York spanning all four seasons. We used a penpal structure to investigate the restorative properties of walking in nature during quarantine. Contemplating human interconnectedness, we corresponded with short performative video postcards, layered digital images, minimal soundtracks and titles that related to ecological and political issues. Wrapped in fabric, our body forms become a canvas for musing during a dark winter, hopeful spring, fleeting summer and cathartic fall. Fabric enhances the hypnagogic [dreamlike] quality of the 'body forms' in our images: isolating, concealing, restricting, or defining movements and tensions within the human figure to suggest an archetypal figure beyond age, race and gender. By blurring the indexical quality of representational portraiture, larger psychological or metaphysical themes emerge regarding the concept of Normalcy. The videos uncover emotions ranging from feelings of oneness with each other, the earth and its life forces to the anxiety and sorrow one feels when witnessing environmental destruction.

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Co-producers: Sherry Erskine + Bonnie Sue Stein.

Concept, photography and performance of their corresponding videos: Sherry Erskine, Bonnie Sue Stein.

Digital post production: Sherry Erskine.

Sonic consultation: John K Erskine.

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With banners installed in public spaces, Erskine + Stein aim to engage the public in actively viewing photography. Each image has a unique QR code to a corresponding short video on YouTube to 'bring the photo to life.'

RELAY–DELAY YouTube Playlist

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RELAY–DELAY Series was created in association with: GOH Productions and Art in Odd Places Festival 2021: Normal, New York City [AiOP] and installed at the 14th Street Y - Outside gate and inside gallery, 342 East 14th Street, May 2021.

Also exhibited at Every Woman Biennial, Copeland Gallery, London, UK and Superchief Gallery NFT, NY, NY, Containall, Prague, Czech Republic and Grand Rapids Public Museum for ArtPrize Grand Rapids, MI.

2022 Aesthetica Art Prize, Longlisted, RELAY–DELAY Series, banner installation, IGUANA Collaborative with Sherry Erskine, John K Erskine and Bonnie Sue Stein, digital exhibition at York Gallery [24 June-25 September, 2022], York, UK and a two page spread in FUTURE NOW 2022 Anthology [June publication].

Exhibitions

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IGUANA Collaborative was founded by artists from Michigan, including Sherry and John K Erskine and Bonnie Sue Stein. Iguana creates hybrid [analog/digital] interdisciplinary works utilizing lens-based media, performance, installation and sound art. They are denizens of the new & unusual, itching to ‘make-a-mark’ across borders and social definitions. IGUANA Collaborative Bio

2020, Self-Portraiture and Digital Photography

Ida

Searching through family photographs with my aunt, we found this photograph of Ida, as well as the hat depicted. My great grandmother, Ida, was 38 at the time of this photograph. We have long known that she developed a passion for finery during the ‘roaring twenties’, but this photograph posed more questions than answers about her personal qualities and creativity. What was she expressing in this pose? Was this her costume or did the photographer provide it? What popular tropes of the early 20th century did the photographer employ – bohemian orientalism; picturalism; vaudeville; opera or motion picture portraiture? What freedoms did Ida enjoy as the first generation of independent American women following the passage of the 19th Amendment (voting rights)? Does her gaze express this new found liberation? How did Ida’s story inform our own?

Artist: Percival G. Wright, Untitled, 1924.

Metaphorical Fabric

Responding to our Grandmother Ida’s 1924 portrait and the hat she was wearing in it, my Aunt Margaret and I posed in Margaret’s garden against corrugated steel drapery. Bound together in the metaphorical fabric of our grandmother’s creativity, this imaginative play ignited the mythic layers of our family genealogy and gave insight into Ida’s psychic reality at the moment her photograph was taken. Perhaps Ida was expressing a new-found feminism in her portrait, one that Margaret and I have aspired to almost one hundred years later. Carl Jung explained the creative process of ancestral genealogy, “Psychologically this means that the souls of the ancestors (potential factors, qualities, talents, possibilities, and so on, which we have inherited from all the lines of our ancestry) are waiting in the unconscious, and are ready at any time to begin a new growth.” This is the first in a new series of works in progress celebrating the hopes, dreams and suffrage of my three grandmothers – Marjorie, Louise and Ida.

Artist, performance, camera and editing: Sherry Erskine, collaboration with Margaret Hartshorn.

Medium: Digital photography

Guardians and Portraits in a Garden, I-IX

Margaret’s garden is a beautifully liminal space; one she filled with mystic energy, gorgeous plants, beautiful objects and ceramics.

Artist, camera and editing: Sherry Erskine

Garden and objects: Margaret Hartshorn.

Medium: iPhone photography

2020, Self-Portraiture

Artist, performer, camera-less process: Sherry Erskine, collaboration with Margaret Hartshorn.

Medium: Cyanotype on cotton, 5’ w x 7’h, unique. Digital details of the head and feet.

2019, Performative Collaboration

Adjust Your Gaze premiered at Art in Odd Places annual festival along 14th Street in NYC, in the segment called Promenade of Visual Visual Flâneurs/Flâneuse on October 20, 2019. The processional performance investigates issues of visibility, vulnerability and aging through costume design and choreography. Holding each other’s trains as a gesture of care, the Adjust Your Gaze IGUANA team represents our collective need for belonging, love, and esteem. Finding strength in numbers, we wander through stages of life with a sense of unity, friendship, and family. As flaneurs, we see you and request that you adjust your gaze to look within.

The premier performance of Adjust Your Gaze was a journey into New York City’s 14th Street commercial and multi-cultural community. In addition to wandering through the local Target Store, Duane Reade Pharmacy, and up and down the 14th St. subway escalator, IGUANA performed for a robed priest in front of the Church of the Immaculate Conception and joined participants of both a Hong Kong protest and a Sukkot hut in Union Square Park. Though many spectators took photos and watched us go by, no one confronted our group. Perhaps because the streets of NYC are filled with oddities, or the somewhat spiritual aspect of the costume, no one blocked our promenade. IGUANA was visibly invisible - able to wander around through the world in the span of one mile.

Concept and costume design: Sherry Erskine

Concept and choreography: Bonnie Sue Stein  

Costume construction: Michelle Beshaw

Photos/official paparazzi: Deborah Beshaw-Farrell 

Iguana Collaborative Team Performance: Bonnie Sue Stein, Sherry Erskine, Michelle Beshaw, Roberta Levine, John K Erskine, Vit Horejs

Thanks: Avenue C Studio/Studio 55C, Chef Dan Crozier, Sarazina and Emla, and members of the AIOP 2019 team: Ed Woodham, LuLu LoLo, Valborg Fletre Linn and Hjordis Linn-Blanford.

IGUANA Post production notes: 1) The train of our robes represent longevity. 2) Holding each other’s train represents our care for one another and resulting sense of community. 3) The ‘high visibility’ material changes color like an iguana - from yellow to green. 4) We formed the Iguana Coalition in 1976, and some key associations with the animal still apply - awareness, camouflage, confidence, contemplation, contentment, curiosity, cycles, detachment, expectation, introspection, patience, serenity, thought, and watchfulness.

http://invisible.artinoddplaces.org/#artists

2019, Self-Portraiture* and Digital Photography

This work investigates the archetypal significance of walls on a personal level. Although some walls protect me, other walls shield my vision and curiosity. Often times, these same walls exist in my heart and mind. During my Fulbright experience, it was exhilarating to venture beyond my fear of the unknown into the big beautiful country of Uganda.

“Like all walls it was ambiguous, two faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side you were on.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

This series of photographs was inspired by this 2019 article: The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism

Artist and camera*: Sherry Erskine

Medium: Digital photography, archival prints, various 16” x 24”.

*The Walls Within, Sherry Erskine: performance and post-production, Derrick Paul Ssemwogerere: camera, Nanyando Justine: styling.

2019, Performative Self-Portraiture

In the summer of 2019, I was a Fulbright Specialist conducting ‘Teaching and Learning Workshops’ at Nagenda  International Academy of Art and Design (NIAAD) near Entebbe, Uganda.  The faculty of NIAAD and I investigated the theoretical foundations of pedagogy which promote critical thinking and skill building in a learner based tertiary art curriculum.  As mentor and mentees, we learned so much from each other regarding creative collaboration, perseverance and the benefit of humour in understanding one another.  Reaching beyond the boundaries of age, race, nationality, culture, language and customs, we found commonality during rigorous work, meaningful conversation and adventurous outings. 

Mosaic Triptych is a performative self-portrait representing my initial experience navigating the unfamiliar and complex culture of Uganda in the first 9 days of the project.  NIAAD displayed the Mosaic Series in an exhibition on campus during their annual ARTLab 2019 Africa Residency at the end of my second week. I enthusiastically share NIAAD/ARTLab’s focus: ‘the power of art in promoting consciousness, dialogue and to inspire!’

Mosaic, I, runner up, 2019 Fulbright Program, Photo Contest ‘Connecting People, Connecting Nations.’

Mosaic, II, winner, 2022 West and Mid-Michigan Chapter of the Fulbright Association, First Annual Photo Contest ‘People’.

Artist and performance: Sherry Erskine

Camera: Robert Ellis

Cloth: Nanyondo Justine

Medium: Digital photograph, archival prints, 24 ”w x 16” h

2019, Portraiture

House closing ritual. ‘The wild creative force flows into whatever beds we have.’ – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Artists: Erskine + Stein

Medium: Digital photograph

Iguana Collaborative Team Performance: Bonnie Sue Stein, Dan Crozier, Roberta Levine.

Camera and Editing: Sherry Erskine

2019, Self-Portraiture and Digital Photography

High visibility fabric not only signifies vulnerability, aging and mortality, but wrapping ourselves forces us to adjust our gaze within.

Artist: Erskine + Stein, Iguana Collaborative

Medium: Digital photographs

Performance: Sherry Erskine, Bonnie Sue Stein

Camera and editing: Sherry Erskine

Technical Assistant: John K Erskine

2019, Digital Photography

My photographic search for evidence of psyche in the physical world reveals the personification of natural forces in simple vapor, ocean coral, flowers, bark and branches. In the editing phase, layering of multiple mirrored imagery and medical instruments further discloses the scientific symmetry of human beings and laws of nature (pareidolia). In these ways, photography engenders a semi-psychological reality to a complex concept – the transferable quality of archetypal forms and ecological forces in our environment. Visions of the Veiled One series investigates an allegorical figure of Irish mythology, the ancient Gaelic healer and personification of winter, Cailleach to represent the spirit of the Earth, the anima mundi, as an ecological force.

Artist: Sherry Erskine

Medium: Dye sublimation on metal, 18” h x 12” w

Camera and editing: Sherry Erskine

2019, Digital Photography

My photographic search for evidence of psyche in the physical world reveals the personification of natural forces in vapor, flowers and branches. In the editing phase, layering of multiple mirrored imagery further discloses the scientific symmetry of human beings and laws of nature (pareidolia). In these ways, photography engenders a semi-psychological reality to a complex concept – the transferable quality of archetypal forms and ecological forces in our environment. Red Bride At The Blue Door investigates an allegorical sovereignty figure of Irish mythology named Macha, to represent the spirit of the Earth – the anima mundi – as and ecological force.

Artist, camera and editing: Sherry Erskine

Medium: Dye sublimation on metal, 18”h x 12” w

2019, Self-Portraiture and Digital Photography

Artist, performance, camera and editing: Sherry Erskine

Medium: Digital photography and video

2019, Self-Portraiture

In a 2016 Ted Talk, ecologist Suzanne Simard explained that individual trees within a forest communicate through a complex biological network of fungi roots much like the internet for humans. Through this forest web, different tree species transmit chemical messages and share nutrients with the most ‘in need’ to balance the health of the community. Simard concluded that before a hub tree (or mother) dies, it nurtures hundreds of young to create a more resilient community.

www.ted.com/speakers/suzanne.simard

Artists: Sherry Erskine [Willow Too & Embrace with Stein]

Medium: Dye sublimation on metal, 24” h x 16” w, and other sizes

Performance, camera and editing: Sherry Erskine

2018, Self-Portraiture

In Autumn, maple trees form scales which cover tiny leaves or flowers already programmed to bud in spring. Ranging in hue from pink and red-orange to violet, the scales insulate dormant buds from cold northern winters. Under this protective coat, we also rest and anticipate the fruits of our labor in the next season. This performative photographic collaboration is part of our exploration of recently digitized 1/2” open reel videos from the 1970s and the lost tape “Gauze in the Woods”, ca. 1977.

Artists: Erskine + Stein, Iguana Collaborative

Performance: Sherry Erskine and Bonnie Sue Stein

Camera and editing: Sherry Erskine

2019, Portraiture

On location in Kwale, Kenya, multiple layer digital portraits. This series applies the figure drawing exercise of draping a white sheet over a figure to develop heightened sensitivity to line, shape, proportion and movement in the overall human form. Applied to portraiture photography, I discovered the ‘envelope’ accentuates not only the pose but the model’s ‘inner state’ as well.

Artist: Sherry Erskine

Medium: Multiple layer digital photography

Performance: Anonymous, Peris Bella & Usi Boi

Camera and editing: Sherry Erskine

2017, Self-Portraiture

Clare-Voyance Series explores a Jungian understanding of anima locus; the relation between the physical world, the psychic essence of a place, and inner perceptions. Through explorations of the underworld caves of the West of Ireland, I observed how natural species such as moths can symbolize and relate to myths of transformation. As messengers from darkness, dreams and intuition, moths pursue light with blind determination, sometimes falling prey to confusion. The moth’s natural life cycle, the shedding of the Cocoon and initial emergence known as The Imaginal Stage, through mature individuation as seen in MOTH–R, signifies the continual enquiry, revision and renewal I experience in the creative process. Also see Wrapped in Instinct Triptych.

Artists: Erskine + Stein, Iguana Collaborative

Medium: Clare–Voyance Triptych, digital photographs on silk banners, 4’11.5” wide x 8’10.5” high.

Clare–Voyance Diptych: The Imaginal Stage, digital photograph on silk banner, 54” high x 80” wide

Cocoon, digital video on 49” flat screen monitor.

Performance: Sherry Erskine [Bonnie Sue Stein as MOTH-R]

Camera and editing: Sherry Erskine

Audio: John K Erskine

Installation: Burren College of Art, Newtown, Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare, IE, April 2017.

2017, Self-Portraiture and Video Installation

PsychLoRama, three channel looped video installation, simultaneous projection of MOTH–R, Gallery Gauze Nudes Descending the Staircase and The Imaginal Stage. Mylar, iridescent film, fabric, wood, dimensions variable.

• Clare–Voyance: MOTH–R, 2017, digital looped video. Soundtrack, Four Twenty-Three, by Jonathan Chen Orchestra with John K Erskine. Location sound by John K Erskine. Aillwee Cave, Co. Clare, Ireland. 4:23 minutes.

• Gallery Gauze, Nudes Descending the Staircase, 1977, ed. 2017, 1⁄2” open reel video transferred to digital 2016, looped, 6:35 minutes.

• The Imaginal Stage, 2017, digital looped video, looped, 1:07 minutes.

Artists: Erskine + Stein, Iguana Collaborative

Medium: Three channel video installation

Performance: Sherry Erskine and Bonnie Sue Stein

Installation, digital camera and editing: Sherry Erskine

A playful exploration of archive, theory, memory, and myth are at the core of Erskine and Stein’s interdisciplinary lens-based media installation PsychoLoRama – a video triptych consisting of one of their first videos, Gallery Gauze, Nudes Descending the Staircase(1977), with corresponding new works MOTH–R andThe Imaginal Stage (2017). The themes of these works are synonymous with the process of creating them – each involving a friendship, a call to journey and a territory for seeking. Figures descending a staircase illustrate the opening of an archive untouched for forty years – a place of anticipation and fear. The journey into the cave involves a process of exploring inner darkness, letting go, encountering the unknown, and a slow transformation of psychic content from unconsciousness to consciousness. This journey and transformation takes time to be realized. It starts as a sensory feeling, beyond intellect and develops by analyzing the visual cures, archetypal subtexts and opposing elements in corresponding videos. In this way, the shedding of the cocoon in the video MOTH-Rand initial unfurling of wings in the video Imaginal Stage illustrate the constant revision and renewal inherent in the creative process. Though the artists see themselves reflected in these ambiguous images, their search for self is universal. Projected on reflective mylar, images of figures flash and fill the room with fragments and traces in much the same way the archive presents itself to its artists. A hypnotic audio soundtrack, Four Twenty Three, by The Jonathan Chen Orchestra progresses in a fractured melodic structure to envelop the space and build tension.

When visiting the first public showing of the work at Burren College in Ireland, Integrative psychologist Martin Meylar remarked, “PsychLoRama depicts the movement and the struggle of the self across the process of individuation, the larval and imaginal stage of self-formation, through which one sheds the darkness of the cocoon to gain a hard-wrought emergence into a new and more brilliant light.”

Longlisted by the Royal Dublin Society Visual Arts Awards.

EXHIBITION

2016, Self-Portraiture

On location at Mortello Tower, Finvarra, County Clare, Ireland.

Artist, performance, camera and editing: Sherry Erskine

Technical assistant: John K Erskine

2017, Self-Portraiture

Junihitoe Triptych explores states of consciousness in relation to self and society. I have reenacted fragments from the Diary of Lady Murasaki Shikibu, ca. 1010 AD, to examine the affects of contemporaneous expectations on one’s sense of self. As a Japanese Heian Era noblewoman, her descriptions of aestheticized court mannerisms and wearing the Junihitoe kimono revealed emotional states ranging from isolation, inadequacy and loneliness to fleeting moments of self-expression. Lady Murasaki lamented, “It is so rare to find someone of true understanding; for the most part they judge purely by their own standards and ignore everyone else. So all they see of me is a facade.” It seems social expectedness has not changed in one thousand years, as people continue to judge one another by the syntax of fashion, identity constructs and social persona. To illustrate states of consciousness existing between belonging and isolation, the figure in the center self-portrait momentarily sheds her mask while being shrouded in the comfort of her own shadow.

Artist, performance, camera and editing: Sherry Erskine

Medium: Digital photography

Technical assistant: John K Erskine

2016, Self-Portraiture

Wrapped in Instinct Triptych depicts how self-isolation and intuition can lead to higher levels of consciousness and inner strength. When creating the series, I examined myths of rebirth to become an animal archetype - a bat. Since ancient times, bats are a universal symbol of intuition and rebirth for their ability to reside in the night and darkness. The three panels of the triptych depict my transformation: exploring inner darkness; letting go and encountering the unknown; and a slow transformation of ego.

Installation view at Burren College of Art, Co. Clare, Ireland, Dec. 2015-Jan. 2016 of a group exhibition ‘Between Three Worlds’ exploring the Anthropocene era.

Artist, performance, camera and editing: Sherry Erskine

Medium: Digital photography on silky faille banners

Technical assistant: John K Erskine

2016, Self-Portraiture and Video Installation

Psyché [breath], 2016, simultaneously projected video installation at Burren College of Art, Co. Clare, IE, two looped videos, gauze and wood, sound-track 27:40 minutes, AP.

Park Lake Persona, 1977, 1/2” open reel black and white video, 9:32 minutes, Iguana Collaborative: Sherry Erskine (the ego) with collaborator Bonnie Sue Stein (the shadow), videography by John K Erskine.

Amphibumans, 1977, 3/4” u-matic color video, 27:40 minutes, original sound track of Dobie Lake bullfrogs, Iguana Collaborative: Sherry Erskine, Bonnie Sue Stein, John K Erskine, Don Trammel and guests of the Electric Way, WELM-TV (the primordial or collective unconscious).

2016, Self-Portraiture

Artist, performance, camera and editing: Sherry Erskine

Medium: [Spinners], dye sublimation on metal, 24” h x 36” w, all other square digital photographs.

2016, Self-Portraiture and Video Installation

Recurrent Too Diptych, 2016, projected video installation at Burren College of Art, Co. Clare, IE, two looped videos, gauze and muslin, dimensions vary, 3:22 minutes.

Look at You and This is Only the Beginning, 1978, ed. 2016, 1/2" open reel video, videographer, Iguana Collaborative: Sherry and John K Erskine with Bonnie Sue Stein, audio from television broadcast during original recording.

Changing Room, 2016, digital video, performance, Sherry Erskine, videographer, John K Erskine.

2016, Video Installation

Begauze Diptych, 2016, two looped videos, 13:29 minutes.

Gauze in the Castle, 2015 - 2016, digital video, Iguana Collaborative: choreography and performance collaboration with Bonnie Sue Stein, videographer, John K Erskine, filmed at Newtown Castle, Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare, Ireland, installed on flat screen monitor.

Gauze in the Bowl, 1978, ed. 2016, 1/2" open reel video, Iguana Collaborative: choreography and performance with Sherry and John K Erskine, Bonnie Sue Stein, Arts Encounter Theater Troupe and Guests, videographer, Roger Gluckin, percussion soundtrack by Tatsuya Nakatani, 13:29 minutes.​

​Installation View: Fabricate, Burren College of Art, Ballyvaughan, Ireland, January, 2016. Ode to Bachelard, 2016, projection of Gauze in the Bowl 1978, ed. 2016, on wood and gauze sculpture exhibited with Gauze in the Castle on HDMI capable TV.

In The Gauze Series, Erskine's lens based investigation of the psyche, active imagination and mytho-poetic themes intersect with Bonnie Sue Stein's performative understanding of the Japanese concept of “MA” (“nothingness” or “the space between”). Developing a technique they call ‘performance with video documented to video’, they explore memory and place in terms of human interaction, apparent time displacement, aspects of sound, and the symbolic function of spaces. The resulting choreography and lens based works are rich in gestural and symbolic language.

2016, Self-Portraiture

Artist, performer, digital and camera-less process and editing: Sherry Erskine

Medium: Digital photographs and gauze cyanotypes, Fabriano Artistic Hot Press paper, 8" h x 8" w, unique.

Technical assistant: John K Erskine

2016, Self-Portraiture

Artist, performance, camera, editing: Sherry Erskine

Medium: Digital photograph, dye sublimation on transparent viole fabric, image 67” h x 35” w..

2015, Self-Portraiture

Studies, I – VIII

Artist, performer, camera and editing: Sherry Erskine

Medium: Digital photographs and gauze cyanotypes, Fabriano Artistic Hot Press paper, 8" h x 8" w, unique.

Open Book, 2016, cyanotype sculpture, Fabriano Artistic Hot Press paper, 11" h x 22" w x 11" d, unique.

Installation view at Burren College of Art, Co. Clare, IE.

2016, Portraiture

Wanders Between Past and Future Like a Heavy Cloud [I, II, Study]

Wanders Between Past and Future Like a Heavy Cloud is a line from Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Seven Seals which celebrates the ‘avian wisdom’ of the halcyon. In this poetic passage, Zarathustra addresses the infinite quality of existence and the burdens implied in the continual transformation of human consciousness. The concept of eternal return signifies an aptitude for navigating life and uncertainty. In the multi-media photograph, the ink captures the spirit of clouds on high mountain ridges, between two seas. It is a place between past and future, light and dark, and here or there. The figures represent the complexity of life through signifiers of multiplicity and order. Archetypal mother, daughter and threshold guide appear in one frame. Their duality represents consciousness on the left and unconsciousness on the right. On the left, masked daughter stands confidently ahead of faceless mother – both signifiers of ego development. On the right, the figure gazes away as if to the depths. Ink drips from their shoulders as a biomorphic pull of the collective unconscious. In this work, the halcyon acts as intermediary, able to connect two opposing elements: day and night, waking and dreaming, heights and depths, individual and collective, time and eternity, and finally the conscious and unconscious.

Artist, collage, camera, editing, painting: Sherry Erskine

Medium: Archival pigment prints on Somerset Velvet paper, hand-painted watercolor, I & II at 43.3" h x 31.5" w, study 24” w x 16” h.

Performer: Caitlin Erskine

2015, Self-Portraiture

Doing the Rounds was performed on location at Charleville Castle, Tullamore, Ireland. [Completed in a 24 hour site specific exercise].

Artists: Cleary & Erskine

Performance and editing: Sherry Erskine

Camera: Martina Cleary, www.martinacleary.com

Medium: Silver halide prints, 16” x 20”.

2014, Self-Portraiture

Completed in a 24 hour site specific exercise on location at Charleville Castle, Tullamore, Ireland.

Artist, performance, camera, editing: Sherry Erskine

Medium: Digital photographs, archival pigment prints, 46 x 61 cm