SNORKEL MAN and ON THESE SHORES Photography, video, installation

Artist Statement

“There is a memory of imagination that has nothing to do with actual experience, which is, in fact, another life”.  Derek Walcott

This intriguing statement offers the possibility that there is another life fueled by the imagination which offers infinite possibilities for the narrative each individual chooses to make of their life. How our personal histories influence and are influenced by the collective history and how both impact that memory which collects in the imagination are of paramount interest to anyone wondering what makes this part of the world so unique and special. Geography played an enormous role in the human migration and settlement of the region and still exerts an exotic enchantment on each new “explorer” (visitor) setting foot in the Caribbean and the Virgin Islands for the first time and every time, for many. 

As a contemporary artist I am concerned with issues that impact our daily life, our environment and our social condition. The initial proposal for SNORKEL MAN intended to provoke questions about the difficulties involved in trying to conduct business and go about work wearing fins, a snorkel and mask. This becomes a metaphor illustrating the strangeness of trying to do business in an environment that seems designed for play. This is especially true on St. John, which is almost three quarters National Park; where the land and sea is reserved for leisure time activities: picnicking, hiking, swimming, snorkeling, etc. enjoyed primarily by short term visitors at the expense of Virgin Islanders whose livelihoods came from fishing, grazing animals and charcoal production before the park existed.

In this context SNORKEL MAN also provides soft and humorous reference to our aquatic environment and its role in supporting our fragile island economies: the business of tourism. This project invites a variety of suppositions and speculations about our lives and how we perceive them. What is serious and what is not. Living in the constant carnival of a resort based economy we are reminded daily of the dreamy life the tourist is experiencing as we toil under the tropical sun hoping to change roles with him or her or simply secure our daily bread and prepare for the future. This “dreamy life” is a part of our lives in a very special way as we on St. John truly are living in a National Park which is a preserve for nature.

In the evolution of this project, which is basically the documentation of a performance piece, everything changed. This is the nature of performance; interaction, which ends up being discovery. One can set out to do something; stage

it, plan it, but in dealing with the dynamic of a natural setting not a stage set with a

living actor things happen while not intended that end up making the project vital.

In this instance the idea of negotiating the quotidian failed to compare with the contemplative, the ideas that flowed from putting our “actor”, a young Virgin Islander into these settings in the elegiac, dreamy nature preserve of the National Park. Not to be over-idealized as lots of cultural, native custom has been cast aside by the federal, not local, mandate of what will be preserved which has created a bitterness towards the Park.

At this time on the island of St. John questions are being raised by this young man’s generation about all of these issues as they quest to find their place in the landscape with regard to ancestors and the dark legacy of a history burdened by treachery and abuse.

The young man, our actor, has the face of the future. He is moving forward and contemplating the place he finds himself in with all the symbols and remnants of the past. How does, he, Snorkel Man, process the myriad beauty and peace being offered in a place that also symbolizes the very brutal history that has brought him, the Virgin Islands and all of us to this moment of reckoning.

The answers are to be found in each of us. The goal of this project is to raise the questions while evoking the eternal beauty of the human spirit and nature in all of it’s manifestations and symbols. SNORKEL MAN references water, the living, moving force that connects us to the land and to the people who came to these shores over 400 years ago and whose legacy is also in need of preservation. ON THESE SHORES references these migrations with miniature figures and a fast paced pastiche of music taking us from the 16th century to the 20th in 1 minute and 44 seconds.