GOING AWAY FROM HERE
I have spent the last four years photographing Tangier Island off the coast of Virginia in the Chesapeake Bay which is progressively being claimed by the waters surrounding it an average of nine acres every year. Tangier is projected to be uninhabitable in 50 years if nothing is done about it. When the residents are forced to evacuate, they will spread out over Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina. We will lose an entire culture of people as unique as their dialect, and although they will still exist--the land they have called home for hundreds of years will not. This once untouched and proud crabbing community is predicted to be one of America’s first “climate change refugees.”
The very water that the residents of Tangier depend upon to survive, is swallowing them up an average of nine acres every year. Today, the island sits only 3 to 4 feet above sea level, and 1 ¼ miles wide by 3 miles long. Upon arrival by boat, it is hard to see the island off in the distance because of how low it sits to the water. Having few trees left, the only marker from the bay is the water tower of Tangier that has a crab on one side and a cross on the other. This deeply religious island has already been split by the Bay’s waters, which now seeps up through the ground below. Simple tasks like docking your boat are becoming more and more impossible. Fishermen have to tie up their boats to poles in order to prevent their boats from floating away at high tide. With erosion, the plants, trees, and protective grasses for wildlife are washing away as well. Cemeteries are overcrowded due to a lack of space to bury their dead. Tombstones and bodies are now being placed on the front lawns of loved ones’ homes more inland.
The people of Tangier and their situation have received attention from Al Gore, Donald Trump, and several media outlets including National Geographic, The New Yorker, and NPR affiliates, but the conversation of future implications still needs to be had.
I believe these photographs are an excellent route to shed light upon this concern of ongoing land loss and impending climate refugees as there is more at stake than just land when losing a place. It also means the destruction of a community, and all the things that make a community unique.
Tangier is not alone and sadly tells the tale many different low-lying cities in the US and around the world are facing in the next 80 years. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Miami, Florida; Atlantic City, New Jersey; New Orleans, Louisiana; Galveston, Texas; Charleston, South Carolina; and Virginia Beach, Virginia will all be under water by 2100. By photographing Tangier Island, I hope to inform viewers of the need to take notice now, and to think about the difficult decisions that stand before us—how will we decide who and what is worth saving? How will we choose who receives the funds necessary to survive, and who are we willing to let wash away into the water?
For more information about the project, please visit: www.goingawayfromhere.com
TETHERED
In 2011, I began conceptualizing and creating Tethered. Tethered was based on images I photographed over a 4 month period of time, documenting my life every 30 minutes, as I performed my daily roles of artist, mother, teacher, wife and daughter. Tethered is a life-long body of work investigating the tethering-effect we experience every day, by portraying what a specific period of time looks like during different days of the week as we perform our different roles.
Tethered utilizes slices from everyday imagery to convey both the intimacy and diverse roles and relationships individuals play within a twenty-four hour period of time. These roles can create contrasting moments ranging from the mundane to the chaotic. This body of work was originally created in 2011–2013 when the artist was in graduate school, the mother of two toddlers and teaching adjunct at night at the local community college. Tethered, revisited 5 years later, documents the same two-hour blocks of time throughout the day, however today, the artist is now a tenured professor, mother of a 9 and 11 years old, and active artist in her studio.
Sheffield’s work is based on images she photographed over a four-month period of time; documenting her life every 30 minutes as she performs her daily roles of artist, mother, professor, wife, and daughter. Utilizing her family as inspiration, she explores the multiplicity of identity we all experience as we navigate our daily roles. The performance of each individual role is constantly being encroached upon by the demands of the other roles, thus, creating the tethering-effect.
Using a mathematical formula, each image illustrates what a two hour period of time looks like balancing the various roles throughout the week. As unique as each two-hour interval is, certain consistencies also run through our scheduled days. The look and feel of a two hour period in the morning versus a two hour period in the afternoon conveys a very different set of characters, circumstances, interactions, responsibilities, and roles.
In comparison to today, past generations whether by choice or not were very segregated --work and family life rarely converged. However with technology, today our lives have become more confused, intermingled, and merged -- thus creating the tethering-effect.
Pulling from thousands of images, I chose 4 to 6 images from the same time of day, but on different days of the week (e.g. 2:00pm-4:00pm). Once selected, I digitally slice the chosen images into vertical strips of information. I then reintegrate all the vertical slices to create a single, compressed image of time. Each print illustrates a two hour period. Tethered consists of nine large format prints (43" x 28" x 4 1/2") that document my waking hours of 6 am to midnight. Once compressed, and as in real life, all the the different events and interactions inevitably merge into a singular life experience.
Due to the mathematical equation used to create the work, the images appear to shift and change depending on the distance and the angle from which they being are being viewed. Because of the illusion produced, the work has been mistaken for lenticular prints, however, they are flat prints.
THE COLLECTIVE GLITCH
The Collective Glitch (2015-2018) utilizes imagery as data and creates a collective image through appropriation. This work looks at what would 15 different people's photographs look like when collected, deconstructed, and then woven together like the making of a tapestry?
I have spent the past three years exploring what makes a memory--what is a personal memory versus what is a created memory influenced by images or media provided from outside sources. For months I searched for a collective of individuals from all over the United States, whose ages spanned over multiple generations, and were from different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds to collaborate with me on this work. Once found, I requested ten images from “the collective”. Some were images they personally photographed, some were images they pulled off the internet, and some were from personal family archives, however, all the images were personal and intimate to them.
Utilizing a vertical version of Morse code as a visual matrix, I digitally weave the multiple data sources (the 15 photos from different people representing the same word) together to form a single, compressed image. Ultimately, I was interested if once combined, would the elements or information from all the images result or create something recognizable to that of the word originally given to the collective.
The Collective Glitch invites the viewer to consider imagery as data, draw upon their own cultural experiences to define the visual data being presented to them, and ask the question, in today’s society, is this what portrait/family/hero/birthday/home/tragedy/moment/fear looks like?
KALAPANA GARDENS
Up until the early 1980's, Kalapana was a thriving fishing village in the Puna district on the Island of Hawai'i. It had beautiful, black-sand beaches and was home to the historical "Queens Bath". By all standards, Kalapana was a beautiful, tropical paradise. In 1983, however, lava began to flow from the Kīlauea volcano, and by 1986 lava flowed from the K?pa?ianah? vent and the majority of the town was destroyed. What once resembled a tropical paradise, quickly transformed into something more closely resembling the surface of the moon. By 1990, the majority of the town was under 30 feet of lava. Over the next two decades, lava would continue to destroy what little man-made structures existed (over 180 homes, businesses, and roads).
In 2010, lava from the Kīlauea volcano continued into the Kalapana region, leaving only 35 homes remaining in the Kalapana Gardens subdivision. Although only a handful of people still reside in Kalapana Gardens, the self-professed “lavatics" must endure this ever-changing artwork of Pele with no running water and no electricity. Even for those who wish to flee, they cannot. Unable to sell their current, lava-covered property, the majority of lavatics do not have the funds necessary to purchase property somewhere else on the island. Today, they are attempting to accept the conditions of Pele, embrace their circumstances, and continue to live as "fringers".
A MOMENTARY GLITCH
A Momentary Glitch investigates the technological failures we experience everyday. These glitches are often interruptive and unwanted in our daily occurrences, yet we accept them as part of the normal course of living with technology. However, if one was to actually look at these glitches, there exists a beauty in each. The mixing of time and experiences results in a new memory or moment. A Momentary Glitch plays with and explores the idea of these unwanted glitches. What if we could create our own glitches and mix our own moments and memories?
Highly inspired by the methodologies of John Cage and his belief that "music composed through chance procedures could become something beautiful," I utilize the everyday life moments around me to record. The work is conceptual and based on video clips and still images I have captured over the past two years that document my life and experiences. Pulling from hundreds of video clips and still images, I edit the video clips and still images together, based on subject matter or events I want to glitch together. Using the language of morse code, I inscribe words or descriptors regarding the technological interruptions we experience everyday (e.g., unwanted, unpredictable, erratic, volatile) into the burned information or imagery on a DVD. The markings create disturbances in the video and catches in the progression of time. I then play the DVD with the morse code scribed into it on a flat screen TV. As the disturbances and catches in imagery occur on the TV, I capture it with my camera. The resulting imagery blends multiple experiences into one, confusing the memory of each and thus creating a new moment. Each image represents a moment in time, that can never be repeated.
DIGITAL TRANSPARENCIES
Inner/Outer addresses the same topic of epilepsy, but as opposed to the external component conveyed in past work, the new pieces address the more complex, internal dynamic of the experience. I am delving deeper into the actual experience of having a seizure and what I am actually feeling, seeing and both medically and emotionally experiencing during these episodes.
The lightboxes contain three sheets of glass arranged together to create a three-dimensional effect. The images contain a grid of containing brain scans of my brain as well as images and vignettes from my life. The color images are placed either behind or in front of the brain scan representing the thought or memory passing through my brain at that moment the scan was taken. As the experience is complex and multi-dimensional, the layering of images allows me to better convey the depth of what is occurring during one of these episodes.