Family History, Collage. Magazines, oil pastels.
March 2021
Atchison, KS
When you arrive somewhere new, you wait and watch to see how you should act in that particular circumstance. Even with scheduled activities and following a strict plan, we search for spontaneity with every breath we take. We rebel against regimen even as we embrace it.
This is study in color, in abstract shapes, and photography. It is an attempt to illustrate the bridge between reality and abstract thought. We seek to find a connection between our incomprehensible emotions and the real world that happens around us.
The modern sensibility turns memory into a photographic pastiche. As we piece together our memories, photography has come to play a central role in our ability to imagine our ancestor's history as part of our own, personal narrative.
We ground ourselves within the images of those who came before us, and we weave our stories around the pictures we keep, even more so now that every person has a cell phone. We take hundreds of pictures each year, documenting so many moments of our lives.
Still, beyond this technological flourishing, the ocean resides, full of fish. The metal machines we have enshrined our cultural data are still somehow just metal carvings. But will the oil spill? Will human kind destroy the world it has carved out it's mark upon?