JOEY LEHMAN MORRIS

Empyrean Fields is a series of ten large format photographs made with an 8x10 inch view camera. Stemming from my Accumulations project and the continued exploration of the Mojave Desert, the ten large scale photographs result from viewing upward into the interiors of the domes that line charcoal kilns constructed in 1877 for the purposes of transforming locally harvested piñon pines into coal for powering a nearby silver-lead ore mine managed by the Modock Consolidated Mining Company. Drawing distinction from historic uses of the dome, traditionally speaking, and the various ways in which transcendental imagery adorns them across cultures, these architectural interiors compound the celestial with the terrestrial, the heavens with the underground. These structures, however, were constructed in service of metallurgy rather than in the service of the clergy, materializing the concept of American Manifest Destiny, while illustrating a smaller idea that once California was reached and fully colonized, the next meaningful place to look would be upward.

In thinking about the domes throughout history and the rich transcendent imagery that adorn them and the mark making that made the imagery potent and otherworldly. Here the marks of carbon that line the interiors are caused by the deaths, or at least transformation of the piñons that once carpeted the hillsides become a literal marks and literal imagery (Carbon Print). Name taken from Dante’s Divine Comedy, illustrated by Gustav Doré (angels made of light circling above – rose pattern). In Greek, the scientific application of the word refers to odor of charred vegetable matter.

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