A PORTABLE TEMPLE

        A PORTABLE TEMPLE is a mixed media installation consisting of twenty- five images. It is my third photographic essay about the relationship between architecture, couture and privacy.

         The first two projects in this series, UNATTENDED BAGS and MORE SONGS ABOUT BUILDINGS AND SHOES revealed how, through necessity or recklessness, we have discarded our privacy to inhabit the new glass house of our collective abandon.

         In A PORTABLE TEMPLE this glass house is represented by my passport holder, a stitched leather envelope whose outline frames each image. It is my identity. Figuratively present yet virtually transparent, it is invested in architectural styles from Neolithic to Mid-20th Century Modern. Its apparent weightlessness symbolizes the demands we face to surrender our personal information for the sake of portability.

         In these works I demur by physically attaching tangible vestiges of my identity to the prints. Some of these accessories address couture formally as architecture for the body but the most personally significant jewelry was designed by me and represents small, elegant creatures such as turtles and bees who have found their homes in A PORTABLE TEMPLE.

         All of these locations are important to me and some are popularly considered sacred.  Although this exhibit's title reflects reverence, I have little interest in spirituality.  I have just always been enchanted by architecture. Amazed that dreamscapes from pre-historic excavations to living cities reappear in my unconscious mind, I offer this clumsy evidence to the temple of the viewer's imagination.

         A PORTABLE TEMPLE is dedicated to Gian Lorenzo Bernini.