Lone Star by Leigh Merrill

February 8, 2013

Leigh Merrill constructs imaginary spaces using thousands of photographs and video segments to create oddly hypnotic and meditative scenes of banal commercial environments. This featured piece, Lone Star, functions as a sort of moving photograph. Clouds crawl in a cartoon-blue sky, birds sing from somewhere beyond the frame, and signs flash lazily for no one but us viewers. Its a piece loaded with subtle humor that hints with both sarcasm and satire. Find the full-screen video on Vimeo to experience its full effect. Find an interview with Leigh on her photographic work here.

Statement:“I make thousands of individual photographs, videos and audio recordings while exploring a city or neighborhood- initially as an archivist or historian might. In the studio, I then digitally assemble and re-assemble these sources to create new videos of imaginary spaces. Each final piece is typically made from tens to hundreds of bits and pieces of different photographs and videos. Some of the images have some veracity, but more often they suggest a visual hyperbole – an embellished scene circulating around a small detail or object that fascinated me. As one spends time with the images their seamless quality slowly unravels.The street where I live is bordered by three distinct residential neighborhoods, a major toll way and a cluster of car dealerships. As in many cities, there are pockets where zoning seems to overlap. On walks, I find myself continually butting up against physical barriers, the walls of the toll way and streets cut off by fencing and neighborhoods. Curious about the physical and psychological barriers in this space, I created videos that embody how these converging spaces feel – both claustrophobic and expansive at the same time.These short videos rock back and forth, seemingly suspended indefinitely in a single moment. The movements in the videos are the ambient changes in our surroundings: litter blowing across the parking lot, the movement of clouds, and light and shadows shifting on the street. The subtly of the movement in these videos share as much with photographs as moving images: the vantage point is fixed and the stillness of the scene is amplified by the faint changes in each location. The sound of the mockingbird can be heard throughout many of the videos, offering an audible echo of the conceptual and regional transformations in this work. Like the mockingbird mimicking the call of another bird, these videos mimic and interpret environments. I am interested in creating pleasure and curiosity in seeing the familiar become unfamiliar.”-Leigh Merrill.Lone Star
HD Digital video animation, 2:09 © Leigh Merrill, 2011Introduction by Gregory Jones

Editor’s Note: This feature was originally published on our previous platform, In the In-Between: Journal of Digital Imaging Artists.

Lone Star by Leigh Merrill

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