So in a couple days my newest/latest/biggest project future so bright will be unveiled to the world, or at least to anyone who ventures down to the Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland during the month of March. The show opens on Thursday, and I am stumbling across the finish line just in time.
For awhile now I have been working on a project that I have often referenced here in the blog as “the ghost town project.” The ghost town project, which has now officially garnered the name Future So Bright, is a series of film+video installations documenting abandoned stages of development throughout the American west. Here is my official pseudo academic blurb about the project:

“Future So Bright is a series of film and video installations that detail and document abandoned structures in the American West. Captured on 16mm film and transferred to digital video, the images create a visual time capsule of forgotten and disregarded spaces, many of which are quickly being reclaimed by nature or new development. “Future So Bright” examines the disposable mentality of American Western expansion and takes note of the forgotten spaces and abandoned relics that are quickly disappearing.
The first piece in the series is the single channel video loop “Western Edge” which looks at the short-lived boomtowns and pioneer settlements of the late 1800s and early 1900s. From the defunct agricultural settlements to mining towns that went bust, early western expansion was marked by rapid growth and rabid abandonment. The second piece in the series, “Motor Hotel” is a two-channel loop that features adjacent images of mid-century development that came with the advent of “car culture” and the family road-trip/vacation. “Motor Hotel” looks at the motels, roadside attractions and tourist traps that sprang up in the 1950s along popular travel corridors such as Route 66, only to be later bypassed and forgotten about with the introduction of the Interstate highway system in the 1960s. “Motor Hotel” explores the abandoned ruins of these once tourist boomtowns as they fall back into the natural landscape.”

The push west has always been synonymous with the American Dream, but the reasons for migration have been very diverse. From the early settlers plodding up the Oregon Trail to the gold miners in search of a fortune to the Okie’s escaping the dust bowl to the family road trip to Disney Land, the west has been traversed time and time again in search of a better tomorrow. Each migration has come with its own forms and needs for development, but what I have found interesting is that the reasons for the collapse of these places are eerily similar. Whether an agricultural transportation hub on the eastern plains of Oregon, a gold mine boom town high in the mountains of Colorado, or a Route 66 tourist trap in the middle of Arizona, the thing that killed these towns was a change in transportation patterns. Perhaps a railroad company went out of business and cut a town off from it’s supply chain, or an new innovation in technology (such as the diesel engine) suddenly made an important stop-over no longer necessary, or the completion of the Interstate system which may have bypassed a once thriving tourist stop. These towns lived and died by their accessibility to transit, and many of them are still out there, slowly wilting away.
Growing up in Denver, living in New Mexico during the early 90s, and then moving to Portland in 1995, I have been criss-crossing the west for as long as I can remember. I’ve never needed much of an excuse to go on a road trip, and learned early on that the roads that didn’t start with the letter I were always the most interesting route. I have been “unofficially” working on this project for years. I mean unofficially in the sense that I knew I was working towards something, I just wasn’t sure what exactly. I have always had a fascination with old, abandoned places, and I have been searching them out, cataloging them, and snapping lots of pictures for several years now. But the project officially began late last spring, just as I was going through a very difficult break-up, when I literally packed up my camera gear and took a spontaneous weeklong road trip through Eastern Oregon. I guess I just felt the need to be around things that had been abandoned, and be reminded of their beauty. future so bright.

This project is about so many things, but at the same time it is incredibly simple. It is a record of forgotten places and an ode to failed dreams. It’s a study of development and the tendency to move too fast, or maybe it’s just a sad love song to all the things that didn’t work. A few months after starting this project I was reminded why I was doing it; there was an old motel that stood just west of the town of Hood River that I would drive by every time I was heading out east on Interstate 84. I’d enjoyed looking at the Motel’s sign for years, and had been planning to stop and photograph it for quite some time but always put it off because it seemed so convenient. “I’ll get that one next time,” I’d think to myself. But on a recent drive I noticed it was gone. I did an about take and soon realized that the entire place had been recently bulldozed. It was gone without a trace.
Sadly, I will be out of town and unable to attend the opening of the show (well, okay, it’s not that sad, I will be in Moscow for the opening of their big Contemporary Art Biennale where they will be showing some of my older work. I still can’t get over the fact that my two biggest art openings to date are on the same day but nearly 6,000 miles away from each other). But in some ways I am a little relieved that I won’t be at the opening. I can just hope that it’s a success, and not have to worry about seeing disappointed faces or hearing smug remarks. This is a big slow piece, and I really would encourage people to go sometime other than the opening, when you could sit and watch the piece in a quiet and mellow atmosphere. I will also be presenting a “live” version of the project at Holocene on March 7th. For that I am selecting bits and pieces of the three video loops and editing them together into one piece with a beginning, middle, and end, and will then be standing along side the projected image performing a soundtrack to the movie. Lots of sad, droney guitar loops and building crescendos. Some ghost town theme music if you will.

Thanks everyone for your help, support, attention, and everything else!