'artist statement'

lost and found

when we remember, we unknowingly alter the memory. my art practice is about the (unintentional) manipulation of memory as it is repeated-- the malleability of the act of remembering. my practice is based in found photographs-- images of moments that at one point were important enough to capture on film, that somehow were misplaced, and made their way to me. with each photograph I create a vehicle for memory through time-- bergson calls this the 'duration' (of memory) between the present (which is actual and real) and the past (which is virtual and real.) I call on these images to enact several points in time: the time it was made, the time it was lost, the time it was found, the time it was repurposed, and the time it is seen (by others.)


every time a memory is remembered, it travels further and further away from the time in which it happened. each time we remember, the memory is subject to malleability due to changed emotions and perceptions of the rememberer at the time of the remembrance.




we ought to forget everything all at once, for every time a memory is remembered it is reremembered or misremembered or disremembered until we don't know if we are thinking of the experience or the rememory or the mismemory or the unmemory.

Selection from 'The Human Stain'

Her head of hair was something, a labyrinthine, billowing wreath of spirals and ringlets, fuzzy as twine and large enough for use as Christmas ornamentation. All the disquiet of her childhood seemed to have passed into the convolutions of her sinuous thicket of hair. Her irreversible hair. You could polish pots with it and no more alter its construction than if it were harvested from the inky depths of the sea, some kind of wiry reef-building organism, a dense living onyx hybrid of coral and shrub, perhaps possessing medicinal properties.


--Philip Roth

Pierre Nora, on the fundamental opposition of History & Memory:

Memory always fluctuates between remembering & forgetting. History, on the other hand, is the reconstruction, always problematic & incomplete, of what is no longer.

Memory is a perpetually actual phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present; history is a representation of the past.

Memory, insofar as it is affective & magical, only accommodates those facts that suit it; it nourishes recollections that may be out of focus or telescopic, global or detached, particular or symbolic -- responsive to each avenue of conveyance or phenomenal screen, to every censorship or projection. History, because it is an intellectual & secular production, calls for analysis & criticism.

Memory installs remembrance within the sacred; history, always prosaic, releases it again.

Memory is blind to all but the group it binds -- which is to say, as Maurice Halbwachs has said, that there are as many memories as there are groups, that memory is by nature multiple & yet specific; collective, plural, & yet individual. History, on the other hand, belongs to everyone & to no one, whence it's claim to universal authority

Memory takes root in the concrete, in spaces, gestures, images, & objects; history binds itself strictly to temporal continuities, to progressions & to relations between things.

Memory is absolute, while history an only conceive the relative.


(1989)

Photo conglomeration

What is revealed in concealment? What is concealed in revealing? What do you see when you look? What don't you see when you look?

Sketchbook page, beginnings

"the bones are here"

Sketchbook page, top hat

"there is no destination without a beginning."

Sketchbook page, ladybird

"shadow daughter"

"what does a woman do?"

Sketchbook page, ear

"a sound as loud as the breaking of a mountain"

Sketchbook page, wedding announcement

"Letherolfsville
Oct 29 AD 1859

this is the likeness of Catherine Christ

when I am dead and in my grave

and when my bones are rotten

remember me when this you see

or I shall be forgotten.


the grass is green
the rose is red
here is my name when I am dead. "

Sketchbook page, tissue

"the shallow grave where old personalities went to be discarded."

Sketchbook page, lady twice

"portraits of people still learning how to look like themselves"

Sketchbook page, contact

"a very tiny, ultra hot fog of energy"

Sketchbook page, fernanda

"you look really nice today"

Sketchbook page, kiss

"an accurate picture of a mountain"

Sketchbook page, sunshine

"you are my sunshine, my only sunshine; when you're not happy, my skies are grey. you'll never know, dear, how much I love you, so please don't take my sunshine away."

Sketchbook page, whites

"all together they were 381 years old"

Sketchbook page, red

"an echo of sameness"

Sketchbook page, girl

"I'll see you in another life"

"We don't walk that way anymore"

Book project: third page (9 and 10)

This photograph is in the first chapter, 'Forerunners,' and the outlined text says, "It is not in outside act or frantic gesture that life abides, but in the deep and secret regions of the soul... it is in the moment that precedes or follows a kiss that soul meets soul."
As soon as I read that line, I knew I had the perfect picture for those words. This photograph shows a man and a woman, looking at eachother in such a way that you can feel their intensity for one another-- the meeting of their souls, if you will.

Sewing is a woman's task, as is the Time spent sewing. White paint is used on house interiors to cover up things that shouldn't be seen. Women are in constant relation with Other Women.

Book project, pages 5 and 6

Two more pages in my Women And Other Women book. This photograph is in the first chapter, entitled 'Forerunners' and the text that is outlined says, "Against whom, indeed, should we fight?"

Sewing is a woman's task, as is the time spent sewing. White paint is used on house interiors to cover up things that shouldn't be seen. Women are in constant relation with Other Women.

Book project: Women and Other Women

This book is titled 'Women and Other Women' by Hildegarde Hawthorn. These are photos of the first and second pages, the front and back of the first photo. I'm hand-sewing the photographs into the book, correlating the image with the text on the page. (The text is painted over, but is not opaque.) When you flip through the book, you see the image, the stitchings, and the backside's stitchings, which are sometimes more interesting than the fronts.

Sewing is a woman's task, as is the time spent sewing. White paint is used on house interiors to cover up things that shouldn't be seen. Women are constantly in relation to Other Women.

Too Many

there are too many things to say and not enough words
there are too many words and not enough things to say

I love you
I'm sorry
I miss you
I wish you were here
I wish there was more time
I wish you didn't have to go
I wish we weren't so far apart
I wish you were here to hold my hand

Do you love me?
Are you sorry?
Do you miss me?
Do you wish I was there?
Do you wish we had more time?
Do you wish you didn't have to I?
Do you wish we weren't so far apart?
Do you wish I was there to hold your hand?

sometimes I know the answers
sometimes I know because you tell me
sometimes I have no idea
sometime we don't talk
or we talk
but we don't communicate
or we communicate
but not with the same language

I think you hide from me
sometimes
I love you so much that it hurts
maybe it hurts you
maybe it's too much love
too strong
too hard
you know what else is strong and hard?
a bully.

I propose that there is no front or back, no wrong way to look at this piece

Late September 2012

Work,

I don't know if I'll show this in class or not

3 views of a wooden sculpture in progress--

'Found' photographs must first be Lost before they can be Found. Why are they lost? Who has lost them? How did a moment that was once important enough to be preserved on film become forgotten?
I am interested in this exchange / loss / remembrance of photographs as physical manifestations of the memories of strangers. I am in the process of building these wooden structures to function as 'homes' for individual photographs (individual memories)-- Each will keep a photo in their midst. I'm not sure yet how the structures will end up, but somehow I will know when they are finished. I want them to be places for the photographs to be remembered an for the photographs to remember themselves.

Faces I make

Late September 2012 doodlings

started working on a new project today...

Forward/ backward

New project idea...

The impact of digital technology on perceptions and learning in The Computer Age

This is a photo from a new project idea. I've been thinking a lot lately about how technology alters our perception(s) of things, especially "well-known" things; particularly famous paintings and other works of art. Everyone knows what the Mona Lisa looks like, right? It's so documented that you don't need to travel to the Louvre to see it, you can just Google it; it's so parodied and copied and appropriated that, if you actually didn't know what the Mona Lisa looked like, you would have a hard time figuring out which image-search-result was the original painting and which were copies, etc.

^This is a screen shot of just page one of the images that come up on Google for 'Mona Lisa'

Sketchbook

Found-photo xylol transfers in my Sketchbook on paint

Newest Transfers- Glass

These are xylol transfers of found photos of ladies onto glass with matte medium acting as a 'binder'-- helping the image stick to the glass. I'm really happy with them so far... I'm going to hang them with twine and a binder clip in a window to display them.

I've been collecting old journals and diaries as well and I'm wanting to incorporate them in with the transfers... Possibly audio and/or video projections will be coming soon. Stay tuned!