Artist Statements
Writing these is still very odd.
I’m new at this.
The world is in front of my camera. I get to make photographs of how we create experiences of our world and how we create experiences of ourselves.
Reality is in front of us, but we interpret what we see and what we don’t see. We make what sense we can of that interpretation by focusing on something and looking for relationships and patterns. Out of that, we create and experience meaning.
Sometimes I don’t know what the meaning is, I just like the experience.
Making images of ourselves and our world fascinates me. We live in a world built by us, and in which we create ourselves.
While I’ve been learning to make art for years, it feels like my artistic journey is just beginning. My past is mostly images of nature, our world created partly by us, but also by physics, chemistry, and biology. The patterns of nature, of wind, and more. That will always be part of me, but now I’m including more subjects. The world we build and how we create ourselves and our lives in this world.
I have 2 projects mostly well conceptualized. Rainier Snows, patterns of trees and snow in the high peaks near where I live. The Ferry Project (yeah, sort of an obvious name, but this project was unexpected), we build these big things and then ride around in them to get to work, and everywhere, and spend part of our lives in them.
Ahead of me are 2 more art projects, and a growing number of documentary photography projects. [any other projects to mention?]
Like many scientists and artists, I’m fascinated by hands. For all that I’m absorbed in how we see the world, we touch it and each other. I want to explore how we touch. And make images of our touching.
Thresholds. It’s an odd and momentous word. They are odd and momentous experiences. Psychological studies suggest passing through one changes our brain. The past is behind us, ahead is something new. This is why when we go into the other room to get something, we can utterly forget what we went there for. Even the most mundane doorway is a threshold. We build them all over the place, in all sorts of ways. Because we kind of have to.
The veterinarian community is in trouble. Their suicide and burnout rates are even more tragic than the rest of us. As part of a documentary film I’m working on, I want to make portraits of veterinarians, veterinary techs and nurses, and office staffs.
Knitting. It’s a thing. It’s been a thing for a very long time. Lots of people knit. Turns out, some of them get together to travel and knit together. We talk about how our feeling of community is waning. This community is finding ways to connect and share experience.
[This statement is for Rainier Snows]
There are some subjects I have to return to.
The textures and contours of snow on the peaks; the lace-like patterns of trees flowing across the snows; the shadows of rocky peaks and trees as light glides across the mountains.
Black & white reveals what color distracts us from.
These images are some favorites from a favorite place, Mt. Rainier National Park.
I hope your eyes find these images as relaxing as mine do, and this visual music is as enjoyable for you as it is for me.
[This statement is for The Ferry Project]
The usual.
A friend invited me to photograph ferries.
I said I don’t photograph ferries, but I haven’t been photographing anything in too long.
Now it’s a project.
Ferries are full (or not) of people. They interact with wind and water. They are a human construction built for purpose, combining many technologies, old and new. They are operated by people doing many different jobs.
They are full of photographs to be made.