The Portfolio of Justin Simoni
Words (Kerouac)
Redwood National Park
California
July 13th, 2007
This is possibly the most important picture of the series for me.
I really was displeased with the pictures that I captured from the redwoods. I wanted you to SEE a redwood - a huge tree in the pictures I took, with the pins. But it didn't work.
I did some research on other traveler artists and realized that firstly: it doesn't matter if you see what I saw: to you, the entire thing is fiction - my reality is your fiction. Secondly, you can do 5 minutes of research on, "Giant Redwoods" and get a pretty good idea of what a redwood tree looks like. So, why tell you something in the photograph that you already know? Why state the obvious? So I didn't. Enjoy the play of light and the abstractions of my out-of-focus shot.
The text in the sculpture is another joke - you couldn't possibly place this in the corner of a sofa.
It's also a reminder of where the materials we use for domestic things comes from: natural resources are living, are not inexhaustible and should be protected. Going through the redwood groves, I became very conscious of the fact that paintings I've made were stretch on frames made of redwood. THESE redwoods. I don't think I'm going to be doing that again soon.