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My Arteries

I can recall as a small child, staring out of car windows, fixated on the endless array of trees whizzing by as we drove.  I remember being amazed at the vast differences between them all.  Some lush and mighty with mammoth trunks rooting their way deep into the ground, some tall and slender, nearly touching the clouds, and others that appeared long past their prime, as if a stiff breeze would knock them to the ground below.  I imagined each tree with a different voice and personality, as if they were well alive and conscious of us humans scooting by in our cars and trucks.  It was the "sad" trees, though, I remember being particularly fixated on.  Something about these somber giants reminded me of actual people, their branches winding about like the veins in my tiny arms, and just as delicately, even purposefully.  To this day I'll find myself strangely enamored by a certain tree I pass, almost obsessed, until I'm able to stop... and imagine it's voice.  Using expired 35mm film and different types of plastic "toy cameras", I've began to satisfy my insatiable need to document these different personalities in all of their glory, and lack thereof.  The unpredictable nature of expired film in combination with cheap cameras, I feel,  help to translate these voices of our ancient friends, letting them appear as unique and as personal as I imagined them when I was young.

-Kaleb M. Starr