In my early aspirational years, the seeds were planted to pursue a creative career as an artist. 40 plus years later in this same spirit, the EYE OF THE WHIRLWIND is born. Now, I seek the freedom to work independently on projects that are relevant to our current world— where deeper meaning is uncovered, where the nuanced and extraordinary is revealed. This is what motivated me as a young man; this time, I have a similar motivation yet with the experience to go deeper.
To navigate the EYE OF THE WHIRLWIND I’ve organized the videos into three categories: PEOPLE, PLACES & BEYOND. With each entry, the writing is the backstory to the video. The video takes you more into a visceral world of experience. Together, the writing and video are intended to complement each other; with the writing being a kind of augmented reality.
“I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort where we overlap.” — Ani DiFranco
Many of my interests focus on people — the lives they live and the work they do. I find in these many short (and sometimes longer) episodes the expressions which inspire me to see the world beyond my eyes and through the eyes of others. The people profiles, from whatever angle, give me an opportunity to explore what others have to say and to discover intuitively their unique way of processing experience.
“I have not been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” — Susan Sontag
Places intrigue me. Places I have visited. Places I have read about. Places that lure me to go somewhere else. The places where we live shape our identity; places we visit expand our identity. We are place-based creatures, living in a physical world of built and natural environments. Traveling to places expands our horizon: where the new appears in contrast to what we know. Experiencing changing landscapes and cultures can have a dramatic impact on seeing our own lives in a broader context. Where we stay and where we venture (and the memories of both) is an essential part of personal growth and adaptation.
“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” — Mark Twain
Beyond documenting people and places, I also occupy an ephemeral space of ideas and moments in time, where a concept or feeling shifts my sense of reality (or unreality). My creative mind often leads me into a world of abstraction: sometimes complex, sometimes simple. This section profiles ideas that do not fall under people or places and stretches my imagination in opposite directions.
I began my career in video and sound production. Then content integrated with 3-D design captured my interest. As our professional career expanded, the exhibition projects that Whirlwind Creative designed and produced spanned a broad range of subjects from natural and cultural history, site specific interpretive design, and environmental exhibitions. Along with this work, we created multi-media and interactive exhibits to accompany 3-D and graphic designs. I realized early on that 3-dimensional exhibition work is unique in its capacity to create controlled environments with lighting, dimensional sound, and artifacts, where groups of people gather for a shared experience. In our video and audio work, time-based media directs a narrative as it unfolds and reveals itself in a more deliberate and dramatic way. Out of this, a multi-disciplinary studio was born.
Throughout our career, clients came to us with pre-conceived directives of what they wanted and often the design work we did needed to conform to their expectations. For each exhibit, our team works hard in the design process to include media into the design. We believe this makes for a more dramatic and comprehensive experience for the visitors. While my interests have always been wide-ranging, each of our projects challenged me to engage with subjects that I may have bypassed otherwise.
As I realize the physical limitations of our exhibits to include a greater diversity of stories, I sought alternatives. An idea occurred to me: The
EYE OF THE WHIRLWIND. This project and website grew out of a desire to work spontaneously in telling stories about people, places and ideas. I wanted the freedom to explore more subjects than work-for-hire allows; I wanted the independence to take on diverse subjects, each in a unique way. I wanted to be more experimental.
My early career in the arts planted the seeds for this endeavor. What I want to model is the freedom to work independently on subjects that have relevance to our current world — where deeper meaning can be found in our lives and the nuanced and extraordinary is revealed.