STATEMENT  (download pdf version) It has long been accepted that artists could stare at one spot in nature—whether it be Mt. Fuji, the Hudson River Landscape, or Mont St. Victoire-- to gather information around which to organize their work. I choose to stare at one spot in culture for my source of information. The “spot” at which I choose to stare is the 1984 movie Supergirl, directed by Jeannot Swarc and starring Helen Slater as Supergirl, Mia Farrow as Alura, Faye Dunaway as Selena, and Peter O’Toole as Zaltar (105 minutes, domestic release).I write and draw information about the movie on sheets of simple notebook paper, so that I can shed the original graphic design while at the same time privileging the casual handmade mark. I then re-draw, or re-paint, the sheet of paper onto a pair of supports prepared in advance to be abstracted but identical. On one support I re-present the front of the sheet of paper, on the other support, the back. This allows me to foreground the simple act of investigation. I never use collage in this series, but not because I’m ideologically opposed to collage, or that I maintain a retrograde attachment to traditional processes. It is simply that I want to slowly recreate a mark that I previously made very quickly, and I believe that putting the information through this process alters the meaning in a positive manner. The end result is a “pair” of images that are nearly identical, each allowing a slightly different investigation of the subject and processes. The pieces are not diptychs. In fact, for exhibition purposes it is useful to see the pairs in conjunction with one another, but I eventually prefer that the pairs eventually be separated. I did not enter into the Supergirl project with any social agenda. I was simply staring at one spot to see what might be revealed to me. I have come to enjoy the fact that Supergirl was a costly failure embedded with a complex web of hopes and expectations. I have come to like that fact that Supergirl seems familiar enough everyone, but not yet truly known by anyone. I have discovered an opportunity to comment on the general ascendancy of film and video in current art production, but from a vantage point within technologically simple forms. I do not have the resources to compete with major studios to produce a feature length film, but I’m finding that I can re-code an existing film according to my own investigation.