A collection of encyclopedia volumes altered into pop-up bird field guides about the Passenger Pigeon, a species that went from being one of the most abundant birds in the world to extinction in 1914. Each pop-up book compares appropriated images of a pigeon with encyclopedia articles, questioning their own relevance and existence. This project was a childish attempt to conjure memories of something we can no longer experience, to re-animate what has dissappeared, what is missing.

Two site specific sound installations of abandoned and boarded up crawl spaces were created for “Not to Scale”, the Smoke Farm Lo-Fi Arts festival. Together they try to recreate childhood memories of prohibited passages into an underground labyrinth of tunnels, connecting ideas and spaces across great distances. A series of sacred spaces that one could hide away prized possessions/reconnect/bury their past.

International District Tunnel in Seattle, WA

Smoke Farm Tunnel in Arlington, WA

Photos by Cindy Apple (1-3) and Timothy Firth (4-5)

Time lapse of building the “tunnel”

First video in a series of meditations on being present by destroying attachment to the past.

For over 60 days I tried to gather statistics about my mood and a number of factors that I felt impacted it. In an attempt to correlate these two things I would draw and color a self portrait depending on how I felt and keep a tally of the different variables that could affect these moods. These variables included: hours of sleep I had, number of alcoholic drinks, cups of coffee, days since I last had sex, negative thoughts about myself, minutes of mediation, and minutes of exercise. From this data I created a number of stacked area graphs showing the distribution of these feelings by color in regards to each variable over the course of this social experiment. All of the graphs and portraits I collected can be seen on the Quantifying Contentment website.

Clear as a Bell from Eric John Olson on Vimeo.

Childhood Ghosts from Eric John Olson on Vimeo.

The following are still frames from the animation:

The project evolved into this series of photographs after more and more questions kept popping into my mind. Questions I needed to ask myself and others. Can we imagine a different potential for these piles of bags? Why do we assume it is trash? Where else do we make similar assumptions in our lives? How is this perspective related to privilege in society? With these questions, observing the reactions of children to the project and reflecting on my previous work as an art teacher in a low income housing development in Seattle, I decided to document the project with a series of photographs taken in NYCHA housing developments throughout Brooklyn and Queens.