25min, 2018. 

Director/Producer - Nicholas Lowe 

Editor - David Reiman 

Sixteen Frames - a moving mirror of the overland trail is part of a series of studies inspired by the landscape painting by the little known artist James Wilkins. In 1849 Wilkins traveled the Overland Trail from St Louis Missouri to Hang Town (now Placerville in present day California) to record and collect landscape details for his scroll panorama, The Grand Moving Mirror of the Overland Trail. In Fall 2017 Lowe undertook to retrace Wilkins’s journey and over a six week period recorded his experiences as a series of observational watercolor drawings, digital video and photographs. These plein-air studies were augmented with archival research into the material history and experiences of those traveling Westward. The diaries and first-hand accounts of life on the trail alongside visits to Trail sites and museums revealed details which have culminated in a range of material experiments that include video, photography, watercolor, ceramic sculpture and text based narrative performance.

Exhibited at St Louis Art Museum - New Media Series: Nicholas Lowe  August 20 2021 - January 9 2022.