I’ve been driving between Los Angeles and San Francisco a lot over the last six months (there is no train there, still). I shot 4k and 6k video as I drove in, out, and between the two cities on the I-5, the longest interstate in California. I edited the footage by weaving together footage of ways that nature and the built environment interact with each other, reflecting on California’s promises and failures in the environmental and housing crises it faces.
-Sabrina Gschwandtner, 2024
Commissioned by and exhibited at 150 Media Stream, Chicago IL in 2024
Photo: Michael Salisbury
Photo: Michael Salisbury
Photo: Michael Salisbury
Photo: Michael Salisbury
This piece is a triangular photo-collage that hangs with one point facing upwards, representative of a kite about to lift off. It’s composed of 49 photographs I digitally altered through cropping, rotation, and color manipulation, and then arranged into a patchwork of alternating green and blue stripes.
I took many of the photographs via KAP, which stands for kite aerial photography. Using kites and balloons, I photographed the school as it was built from the ground up, over a two year period. I mixed these photographs with found ones, of Marshall Island navigation charts from the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and kite aerial self-portraits that I found online. When viewed together, the photos are meaningful points – far away landscapes, familiar views, tactile lines, abstract color fields – within which viewers can locate themselves.
Collection of the NYC Department of Education, Public Art for Public Schools. Photo: Etienne Frossard.
Photo: Etienne Frossard.
Photo: Etienne Frossard.