Tim Terrell



Director - Park Stewradship Through The Arts

GRINDING BOULDERS
A desert can be defined as a region whose annual average rainfall is ten inches or less and has significant transevaporation. Animals and plants are forced to adapt to the severe conditions or perish. Of the species which survive, most are usually smaller than their counterparts outside the desert. In the driest conditions, some plants assume a dormant state which often gives them an appearance similar to being dead.

On the edges of where man has established a tenuous footing in the desert, there are GRINDING BOUlDERS. The pressure is exerted by nature, man and the passage of time. The random product of these GRINDING BOULDERS is not igneous, but rather metamorphic in nature. Machines grind to a permanent hault, dwellings reach a state of collapse beyond repair. Man is forced to retreat, leaving behind a residue at these edges.

It is on these edges where I work. The metamorphic product provides the raw material I fashion. Overpainted, manmade surfaces are investigated and reinvestigated for both their graphic and associative value. Desert vistas are juxtaposed with discarded, usually broken, manmade objects, in order to delineate the myriad relationships that exist simultaneously. These relationships suggest a timelessness where past, present and future intertwine. A slash mark in a sheet of metal, with an ever growing field of rust, is no longer the obvious, but rather a graphic icon to be explored for its own intrinsic value and synergistic potential. A discarded cover to an airduct becomes a portal to another world. Storms on the horizon no longer exist simply on the desert floor. Impending thunder and lightning point out a trauma within.