Images are taken in rapid succession of one another, a seemingly endless pile of split second capture. Digital photogaraphy is a quick response to what is happening around us and immediately, almost self-consciously, we consume the results in instant play back. Photography in many ways has become an indecisive moment of a staccato stack of images scoured over in post-production.
My ‘Indecisive Moment Series’ re-creates the anticipation of the image that used to be an experience in analogue photography. There is a separation of time from the moment the picture was taken to the inspection of the negative and print where our memory is allowed to take shape and recall details that are not necessarily photographic… a sensual recall. By weaving two images together that were taken within seconds of one another, the end result slowly surfaces. There is a delay with the image… details diminish and it becomes active like memory with a shift from the instant moment to an unfixed recollection.
Photos are posted on the internet, dates are announced and the address is disclosed. Cars line up along the curb, strangers to the deceased, slowly yet eagerly meander through the quiet house... looking, wondering, collecting.
‘Left Overs’ is a book about the ebb and flow of the material remains of a life, a deconstruction of a generation and a shared cultural memory based on the collection of stuff. It is an ongoing observation of Estate Sales; the private unhinged into the public.
Comprised from an assortment of vintage National Geographic and LOOK magazines, Currents is a re-hash of old events re-imagined into a contemporary news feed. Images are layered, altered and re-positioned to visualize global warming, border crossing and escapism.
The Southern seasonal shift of warm to warmer to hot to unbearable brings me North every year, a slight cheat of my native psyche where I did not earn the warm air but still relish the summer sun in a cooler climate. Living in Florida bears a price; the steady beat of the sun denotes time passing and years skip ahead with only residual details captured and blended together. Children’s shadows grow longer, the monarchs faithfully return each year around the Great Lakes to lay eggs on milkweed, the air shifts to cool again the summer time is gone.
Made in the USA reflects on the photograph as an object and the inherent qualities of the image seen through mid-century color transparencies. The spirit of photography and the motivation of the snapshot perpetuates in 'Made In the USA' as a parallel reflection in contemporary image consumption. The image is less about the picture and more about the instantaneous viewing that is is being re-created w/ instagram, iphoneography and social media... a shared personal experience that has become a cultural dependency. The hand held device in many ways has become the new object to project the modern snapshot.
The installation Tethered looks at the tension of moving; letting go of objects and the indecision that comes from making choices of what to hold onto, what to let go of. Each suitcase is held open, recycling personal stories and dreams in a tenuous state. The individual is exposed and liberated at the same time.
All That Remains Will Be Devoured: roads leading nowhere and folded, vacuum-like seams within the landscape, constitute an exterior sense of comfort that works its way out from the inside; letting out a certain amount of sadness and taking some back in again. This is where the new begins.
Memory is a web of information and stored experiences that can be unlocked by taste, smell, touch and sight. Scanning objects heightens the tactile potential of memory, a hopeful anticipation is felt at the tangible surface of each threshold. Real fragments surface in our thoughts and dreams; we yearn to go further, turn the page connect the pieces to reclaim a moment. Yet we can barely scratch the surface.
Hope Chest is a book I made for a friend before she was to be wed and leave the country to start a new life. The wishful preparation and waiting for the arrival of this momentous change brings all of the symbolic efforts of one's family, culture and personal expectation into an extraordinary leap of faith: marriage.
Ideal Comfort is a representative of what we value and surround out homes with. A selection of personal objects... books, chairs, fabric... are flattened into a portable space. The removal of nearly all structural materials mobilized the objects. These new compositions are big stickers or strips of wallpaper, becoming atmospheric and reminiscent.
The Gift is a sequence of meetings. Images collected over a period of time are sorted and stacked together. I identify what is valuable or threatening within the small exchanges of these interactions.
Tandem is a book consisting of a series of diptychs. The images describe the subtle nuance of time spent within intimate relationships. The textures and patterns become residual aspects of each recollection.
Walk/Stand are time blocks of paused, insular moments of observed details. The ubiquitous textures, patterns, color and light become stamped into our memory and often become heightened by the complicated emotions wrought by too many goodbyes. The images are mounted on square blocks and can be stacked and rearranged. It is a quiet poetic reflection of time.
Lost and Found is based off a shoebox of color photographs acquired at the Laney Flea Market in Oakland, CA. The images were taken over the period of several years throughout the 1970s by who I believed to be a young soldier returning to the USA after time spent in Vietnam. I paired the images with a photograph I took as a child of my father, who was the age of the soldier at the time this piece was built and my brother who was the same age as the soldier when he photographed the countryside. The photographs were devoid of people for the most part and beautifully sad. I shared the experience of the soldier's sadness with the mourning of my father, finding solace in his journey... looking through the eyes of a young man.
Sweet Sorrow from the Swap Meet is an ongoing project of images taken from Ebay. The pictures are arranged into small poems, responding to the pathos and humor I find in Ebay’s catalog of snapshots and objects.
The images are mounted on custom made cardboard boxes which reference how objects are stored, passed on or recycled.
Departures & Arrivals is a series of images taken with 35mm Kodak film, digitally scanned and stitched into a travel log. The images were taken on a cross-country road trip from Oakland, CA to Detroit, MI.
Delivering Buffalo is comprised of thirteen C-prints mounted on board. The images slide in from the side and imply an interactive aspect to the overall structure. The wooden frame alludes to a sentence diagram or the framework of a house not quite complete.
He Went West is based off a photo album from the 1930s, early 20th century travel photography and images of my own. It is a narrative about my brother who moved to California and the romantic notions of what the West Coast offers to the wayward soul.
