WHEN IN KANSAS

When in Kansas is my Honors Thesis project with Brown University’s Visual Art Department. Exhibited March 5-16, 2021 in Gallery 221 of List Art Center.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

In the summer of 2020, I took a road trip across the country, from the Oregon coast back to Providence. Having never left the Eastern time zone before, I was excited about the sights—the Pacific Ocean, the Rockies, the Snake River—and worried about the vast stretches of nothingness that awaited me in the flyover territory of the midwest. While the driving would certainly be more difficult along the coasts and near cities, the section of our road map that I dreaded the most was the straight, flat, long line across the empty plain of Kansas.

What I found on that stretch (besides the rock that flew up into our windshield—the only car trouble to plague us the entire 3,000 miles) was the biggest, widest sky I’d ever been under in my life. I was unprepared; I’d never seen a picture that could have prepared me for the oppressive weight of the sky in that place, where there isn’t a structure for miles besides the wind turbines that dot the horizon like pinwheels. So I tried to make one. And then another, and another. So what you’ll see here are just a few of many earnest attempts to capture that relentless, cinematic, enormous, romantic, sprawling, blue divinity. I wish you could have been there, but I hope this makes up for it.

Cheers,

Deanna