sarah spitler dot com

work

I am concerned with layering the systems and structures of our physical world against those elements more ephemeral in their nature. Form, for me, relates to the structure and specificity of geography. Geographical form, such as the pattern of land against bodies of water, is seemingly arbitrary; however, it is contingent upon an infinite number of determinates: the system of erosion as influenced by temperature, the molecular structure of water, the vicinity of cities and infrastructure, jet streams and currents, geological and soil composition, the species of surrounding foliage, continental plate construction, etc . . . Contingencies influence the physical aspects of our world; the layering of imagery is also about contingency because, as in science, they force us to make connections between two ( perhaps ostensibly disparate ) elements.
Chaos manifests itself alongside form in my work. Chaos is powerful in that it is beyond human control; specifically, it interests me in depiction as catastrophe - as the uncontrollable and random force of natural cataclysms. I enjoy the emergence of fragments of imagery in relation to a destructive force - they become reduced and ephemeral, they are representative of the momentary and transient. However, according to the scientific study of chaos, it is the minute and transient that manifest as larger factors, further down in the equation, in the study of matter.