Kite Flyer: The Human Figure in Motion

"Kite Flyer No. 1" 2016

On my way home from Hong Kong earlier this year, I had time to sit and ponder several projects I have been working on over the year. My exploration on light and how we perceive it, as seen in my pieces on Water Refractions and my Sun Shadow series, as well as distortion in perspective, as seen in my woven portrait series, are subjects that have captivated me this year. Bending light and perspective floats my boat. I then began wondering if I could move a single frozen moment in time by cutting the image up.

As I slept on the 15 hour flight home, I had a vivid dream of my daughter running with a kite, its tail lingering behind her. I remember looking at the image of my daughter in the same way as Marcel Duchamp's famous painting "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" 1912, with its depiction of rhythm and movement all on one plane. Except in my dream, I worked from a single moment and it was my goal to try to make, as Duchamp said "a static representation of movement."

The dream was so vivid that I immediately woke up and wrote all the details down.

I began to think of how I would turn that one moment into movement by cutting the photograph up into vertical strips that were then sewn back together with thread. The tail of the kite being an extension of the paper, an extension of movement and time.

Today I wanted to show you what I have been working on. These are the first sketches of my exploration in combining the various projects I've been working on this year.

Lets go fly a kite!

Julie Green
December 3, 2016

"Kite Flyer No. 1" 2016

"Kite Flyer No. 1" 2016

"Kite Flyer No. 2" 2016

"Kite Flyer No. 2" 2016

"Kite Flyer No. 2" 2016