Mooring Artist Statement
Zeppelin Airships, blimps and dirigibles have a storied history within aeronautics and popular culture. There is the immediate fascination with the matter of scale these vessels inhabit and the gigantic infrastructures required to keep them afloat. These containers of an invisible gas lighter than air, swimming to destinations, have fascinated and enthralled generations. The impetus for this exhibition is within this invisible volume and the notion of lighter than air which is easier to experience than describe.
The title Mooring denotes an action of fixing to a point, a measure of controlling an entity by means of gravity, mass and machine. This control exists in an attempt to mitigate unwarranted interaction with other bodies. Mooring makes use of tethered strands, which individually are no match but when used in concert can exert and withstand tremendous forces. This action is applied when the vessel is surrounded by modes of fluctuation, an inconsistency of depth, position and stability.
Mooring also describes the adherence to a moral framework. This fixed point helps to define the moral compass of a people and is evident in the trajectory of progress. As a society, we have the capacity for adaptation to our ever changing environments that gives the same stability of tethering to a mast. Though invisible, this framework reveals the outliers and flaws within the whole. But it is within the collective steering that change is possible while maintaining integrity to preserve the future
Jodi Lightner – Interstitial Parallels, acrylic paint, ink on mylar, 2017
