I am drawn to themes related to time and its effect on our lives: development, aging, and clinging to memories. Growing up, growing old, and eventually giving up all that we have come to accept as reality- they are universal but unresolved concepts, and ones that I have yet to fully comprehend. At its fundamental level, my work reflects my desire to capture the mystery and desperation of these concepts through illustrating my own internal dialogue.
I have always struggled with what I perceive as constraints in the physical world of art, specifically working with flat canvases and static compositions. I gravitate toward work that somehow breaks out of the box, encompassing movement and a multi-dimensional aspect. Video appeals to me for the absence of limits: with this medium, I can work in a virtual space with no walls or edges, planes that twist away and distort themselves, and a continuously evolving composition. The technical aspects involved in time-based media are literal manifestations of the themes that I find so compelling, such as movement, transience, and immateriality versus the confines of the physical.
Recently I have been influenced by the work of artists and filmmakers such as William Wegman, Joseph Cornell, Federico Fellini, Chris Marker, and Miranda July. Although different in their mediums and styles, each communicates a strange poignancy and a mixture of sophistication and innocence that I find fascinating. In my own work, I attempt to blend the honesty of drawing and written text, the vibrancy of painting, and the dynamic impact of collaged imagery and sound to create a sense of both familiarity and surrealism. I want my videos to feel personal and handmade, as they are essentially visual journals and records of my own thought process. I work with stop animation and digital collage techniques to integrate the physical processes of artmaking with film.
The three videos in this show each focus on remembrance: looking back on a memory of disillusionment, a child’s realization, and the remnants of time that fill up a space. We are surrounded by temporary things- as close as our own skin- and memory is the map of the holes they leave behind. As with projected images on a wall, color eventually fades to black and motion slows to a halt, dissolving the illusion of permanence.