SUNROCK

Sunrock is a site-specific work that utilizes light, shadow, wood and stone to track the path of our sun. In the array of photographs, the passage of time is presented as physical distance, with the intention of temporarily breaking our artificial and technologically mediated relationship with time.

In the installation, a wooden pole is installed into the desert floor and the camera is facing South. As the sun rises the pole casts a very long shadow across the desert. A rock is placed at the “tip” of the shadow and moved at intervals to retain that alignment. The rock moves closer to the pole as the sun approaches its noon zenith. In a sense, making light and shadow gravitationally “pull” the Sunrock toward the shadow’s point of origin – the base of the pole. The act of photographing becomes performative as the camera is moved repeatedly between the rock and the pole. This is done throughout the day to capture the entire shadow cast by the two objects. As a technique, walking the distance eliminates camera lens distortion and creates the appearance of a straight horizontal line from the rock to the pole.

The movement of the sun, combined with the shifting photographic perspective, creates a relationship between the natural and the artificial. Rather than a reinterpretation of a sun dial, Sunrock is a representation of our interwoven spiritual, physical and abstract connection to the solar cycle, and our relative position to time and place.