Dream Work

I have made several projects that work with dreams.  These began when I realized that I had several vivid dreams that I still remembered from very early in life.  I had never kept a dream journal but decided to spend a month remembering dreams to see how many would “return.” It surprised me how many did.

Both a gathering of responses and an investigation of dreaming, “Oneiric Oology” is a wall installation of dreams across time and the space of 25 people.  The inscribed eggs held by vintage calipers comes from a dream of my own… and the varied voices converse, detached from the time and place of their dreaming.  You can read more about this installation here:

Oneiric Oology

The first dream drawing I made was “River + All Remembered Dreams”. Over 12 feet long, it uses a sailing chart of the Hudson River as the “line” of a timeline of my life to that point (around 1998).  Along the river-timline I placed abbreviated dream narratives at the age I thought they occurred. Both the journey of my life and the Hudson end at the same place I was living at that time: Brooklyn New York.

“Dream Spaces” side-steps our usual means of recording or conveying dreams –the story– and depicts 15 of my remembered dreams by mapping the space and any movement of me or others in the dream.

“Dreams of Flying” was inspired by my realizing that I’d never had a flying dream –as common as they are.  So, I decided to create a waking flight dream.  This audio + installation was exhibited in a bank vault room of Urban Institute for Contemporary Art. Surrounded by feather pillows bearing photo transfers of bird flocks, a soft audio of wing beats surrounds you… Hear the audio and read more about this installation here:

Dreams of Flying