Caroline Parker - Selections from Five Years DietzSpace March 15th - June 30th, 2008 1. Water's Edge 2, 68x68", oil on canvas, 2003 2. Water's Edge 5, 24x24", oil on canvas, 2003 3. Water's Edge 4, 24x24", oil on canvas, 2003 4. Water's Edge 6, 24x24", oil on canvas, 2003 5. Memorial Plans, digital photographs on 20x13" monitor, 2004 6. Memorial Plans 5 (diptych), 72x28", 72x20", oil on canvas, 2005 7. Central Park, August 4th ("He's a very repetitive bear"), video projection, 2007 8. open book, 8 1/2x11" pastels on paper, 2007 - ongoing All video and digital photographs in this exhibit are unadulterated. Projection shown one hour per day or on request.

As children we used to walk past the highway and watch the ferries and barges.  I was fascinated by the pilings, imagining the depths at the bottom of the river. In 2003 my mind was consumed with the city's infrastructure and the Water's Edge series was my way to examine it more closely. The battered columns marked by the tide seem still like a bellwether. In 2004 I went to see the World Trade Center memorial design competition entries at the Financial Center.  It was difficult for me to focus on the myriad of architectural drawings, eerie models and LMDC texts with grossly inappropriate rhetoric like "We Must Show Victory!". Instead I found myself looking and thinking about the other people who were there.  I photographed the plans and saw many people's reflections which, in combination with the designs, precisely captured our moment.  The Memorial Plans screen is a compilation of the photographs.  The paintings were made from two of the images. The Central Park Zoo has gone through changes over the years and I've wandered through it many times.  Having read about the new addition to the endangered species list in 2006 I started to re-visit Gus and Ida, the two polar bears. I was always disturbed and entranced by the repetitive swimming stroke that often lasts for hours and when I began filming it I started listening to what the other visitors were saying.  Central Park August 4th includes ambient audio of their comments and shows a reflection of the shuffling shoes and sandals in the partition glass.  In my recent work I've been trying to master a way to paint directly from the motion of video.  Though I had always worked roughly from my photographs I think my desire to work from video is an effort to allow my brush to align even more with my senses.  Then having read about the refugee crisis in Iraq, I began watching short film clips of citizen's testimony and footage of daily life at the online news site Alive in Baghdad.  open book is a collection of pastels I made from repeated viewings of those films.  The stories are very moving and I have discovered that by replaying the scenes the voices begin to evoke a sense of place and a deeper understanding of that tragic reality. It has clarified the true impact of the US invasion and occupation of a country that, having posed no imminent threat, is decimated by a war which the majority of Americans and many political officials now believe was waged based on purposefully false intelligence. Caroline Parker, 2008