Joelle Dietrick
Chasing the Sun
In Chasing the Sun Dietrick intertwines images of extinct and endangered plants with sustainable home design by women architects across 24 time zones.
09/22/2023 - 11/17/2023
Two bold murals highlight a particular plant endemic to Kawai. The Hibiscadelphus Woodii was believed to be extinct but recently spotted by drone living in the mountains. Surviving but out of reach from civilization.
Installation view: Chasing the Sun wallpaper murals, archival pigment prints, animations
Chasing the Sun is a series of prints, wallpaper, and animations that stretch across three screens. Each screen of the video installation is divided into eight vertical sections—24 vertical stripes for the 24 time zones. Within each stripe, remnants of extinct plants and eco-friendly homes designed by women architects drift while colors shift according to the time at each represented location. The results are slow-moving and meditative, providing a space for audiences across cultures and ages to process climate grief within the context of new understandings of geological time.
The series of prints remix the imagery from the animations, and one flowering plant, the Hibiscadelphus woodii, endemic to Kauai, Hawaii is made larger than life as wallpaper. Once thought to be extinct, Hibiscadelphus woodii, or Wood's hau kuahiwi, was rediscovered in 2019 by a drone where it was growing out of steep, vertical face of a cliff.
Inspired by artist Joelle Dietrick’s travels to Germany, Chile and China and her five-year-old daughter’s wish to travel at the same pace as the sun to never sleep, Dietrick began work on the series during the COVID pandemic when natural systems felt out of control.
Installation view: Chasing the Sun wallpaper, The Sherwin Series, Chasing the Sun animations
Installation view: Chasing the Sun print gallery and 8 prints from The Sherwin Series
Chasing the Sun, 24 Prints 15.75” x 11.75” 2023. Archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle PhotoRag 308g.
Installation view: Chasing the Sun prints on front wall
Chasing the Sun Animations: Three 4k videos synced with BrightSign players
Joelle Dietrick's paintings, drawings, and animations explore infrastructure, particularly housing, and its manipulation by automated, global economic systems. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, Transitio_MX in Mexico City, TINA B Festival in Prague and Venice, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, MCA San Diego, Long March Space Beijing, ARC Gallery Chicago, Soho20 New York, and MPG Contemporary Boston. She has attended residencies at MacDowell, Künstlerhaus Salzburg, Anderson Ranch, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Banff Centre for the Arts, and the School of the Visual Arts and received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, University of California, Florida State University, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), and Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program. Dietrick completed a BFA in Painting at Penn State and an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego. She was born in Pennsylvania and teaches at Davidson College outside of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Photo by Holly Clark
