Pockets of Blue (adapted for web) is a collection of photos between, around, and within the areas of La Jolla and the Coachella Valley. Connecting these lands and crossing the San Jacinto mountains is a winding road, California 74, that my mother prefers because of the scenery. Not minding tight roads edging cliffs where certain doom is only heightened by her daredevil speed, I do agree with her that the scenery is worth the drive. This project was realized on that road as I took photos of the landscape between her broken front windshield. I saw the cracks drawing on the landscape, expanding its potential through the projection of scale. The book is printed in 17in. x 11in. presentation paper and bound with waxed, black string in a modified Japanese 4-hole book bind.
The sky is a way to bridge the damp, magenta air of San Diego and my home, the dry desert. What I find in these blues is possibilities. I find memories, bodies, where the sky ends and how my childhood toys, suspending in blue nothingness, wedge into the landscape—how play is lost to time. I find that the sky covers the quiet emptiness of distances. So even when I press my face into the hot sand, I still see a sky, maybe after sunset or I imagine it on the other side of earth, somehow still between my gaze and overwhelming space. My wonders and fears fill that in between space, pulling an uneasiness that can only be stretched so thin until I spring back calling for home.
