artwork > video

Deer-Woman of the Mangrove Forest
HD single channel video running time 4:24
2018

She arrives upon a mangrove coastline, as if from across the Atlantic, wearing a long gown. She appears to have stepped out of a Velazquez painting, in wonderment, as if from a dream that has dropped her into a wild new country. History tells us that many men arrived from Europe upon our uncharted shores, to conquer and destroy. But what if a woman had arrived instead? Would she have had the same instinct to conquer? Perhaps not. Perhaps she would have wished to become a part of the environment, to step into and become one with it. To escape her restrictive past, to disrobe from her formal life and enter the water and become something anew and untamed. She remembers a deer encounter from her youth, their sweet feminine ways, and decides upon that. She had read about this mythological hybrid, spoken of in American Indian legends. Watch her transformed before our eyes, become part woman part deer. At last free, she disappears into the landscape forever.
Shot at Bear Cut Nature Preserve during my Biscayne Nature Center Residency in Crandon Park Artist Residency.