"Leaving The Ground" was completed in 1988 following a one year's residence in central Mexico. The video depicts the notion of human flight both as an element found in certain Mexican rituals and as a universal human impulse. Sequences of air-borne humans are juxtaposed against the "grounded" context of driving in a car. The viewer perceives dream and memory excerpts traveling across the picture plane (front windshield), and these images occasionally overwhelm the driver's view, allowing possibilities of thought/flight and dream/memory to momentarily dominate. The source footage for this video derives mostly from super 8 sound film. "Leaving The Ground" received The Stuart Rome Prize as the "Best Maryland Work" entered in the 20th Annual Baltimore Independent Film and Video Makers Competition in 1989. It's been screened in numerous other festivals nationally. The "Leaving the Ground" video followed my completion of a series of paintings developing the theme of driving in Mexico. After I made the video, I re-edited the footage, formatting it as a 4-channel video installation entitled “Driving in Mexico: A Video Mural”. 8 monitors set into an 8’ x 24’ mural wall display the 4 video tracks.
