Krista Leigh Steinke and Sherman Finch. Juried Artist
Big City Lights
QUT the Sphere
SAE Screening
UNISC Art Gallery
Artist Statement
Sun Mapping is an experimental video that animates the pathway of the sun juxtaposed with imagery of natural specimens collected from around a coastal setting. The project, a unique merging of analog photography and digital processes, is a poetic exploration of the symbiotic relationship between the oceanfront landscape, its ecosystem, and the greater cosmos.
For this project, pinhole cameras (made from soda cans, cookie tins, and other small containers) capture the path of the rising and setting sun over time, with exposures that last from a few hours up to a year. These solargraphs merge with other pinhole photographs of natural and found samples collected from around the seashore. The video unfolds like an animated painting, moving between the abstract and the representational, where imprints of sand appear like stars, amoeba-like creatures burrow themselves into an obscure background, seashells float in water, and horizontal shapes rise and fall to echo the movement of waves. Here, relationships surface between time and space, light and dark, and the micro and macro, as the sun traces across the screen like a drawing in motion. These marks made by sunlight also allude to coordinates on a map, the movement of water, weather patterns, or a diagram of the cosmos.
An original musical score which includes recordings from the natural environment accompanies the video.
About the artists
Krista Leigh Steinke is an interdisciplinary artist working in moving images, experimental photography, and installation. She regularly exhibits and screens her work in museums, galleries, and film festivals across the country, as well as internationally. Her work has received support from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Puffin Foundation, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Glasscock Center for Art and Humanities, and a Fellowship from the Howard Foundation. She has been a visiting artist at numerous colleges and universities and participated in several art and media festivals as an exhibiting artist, speaker, or curator. Steinke holds an MFA from The Maryland Institute, College of Art, and a BFA in Studio Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University.
Sherman Finch is a hybrid artist, whose work ranges from interactive research, kinetic sculpture, sound art, and musical composition, to UXUI design. He holds a BFA from RISD and two Master’s degrees from the Maryland Institute, College of Art. Steinke and Finch have over 20 years of experience working together, recently under the name The AKA Studio. They met while in graduate school and over the years, have collaborated on several film, video, and multimedia projects. Their work has been featured in international and national film festivals, conferences, and exhibitions. They currently divide their time between Houston, TX, and rural NY State.
Credits: Krista Leigh Steinke and Sherman Finch