Essential Staples 2008-10

This project began with olives. then to salt. now to water.
all projects continue to expand.
For olives, see "an allegory of olives" and "evidence" albums.

Salt is an essential staple and a biological necessity. Sodium Chloride (NaCl) is simple salt. Other salts can provide the Cl, the chloride necessary for digestion but only NaCl provides the sodium critically essential for neural transmission, muscle contraction and bone growth. As a result, NaCL is one of the most essential world commodities. Whoever controls salt controls the life of a region.

The effect of salt upon food use and politics has been enormous. Its uses, from the mundane to the ritualistic, and the laws that developed about its gathering and trade are complex and metaphoric.

Access to water is an imperative universal right. Current work examines the omissions and erasures of details in the historical narratives regarding water.