"Clear Water Samples"

It took a very long time to conclude that this series is 1) very small with four images and a sculptural object and 2) a segue into an as of yet unnamed series which features this and this. I am not even sure if it is worthy enough to put on the website but I will include it on this blog as a finished document with an artist's statement. [The sculpture is coming soon as the wood shop is closed for the week.]

Clear Water Sample: La Jolla Cove, CA, 2011

In Werner Herzog’s “The Truth of the Ocean,” he describes two members of the Peruvian Machiguengas tribe visiting the sea for the very first time:

“They went silent and looked out over the breakers…Then one asked for a bottle. I gave him my empty beer bottle. No, that wasn’t right, it had to be a bottle that you could seal well. So I bought a bottle of cheap Chilean red, had it uncorked, and poured the wine out into the sand. We sent the bottle to the kitchen to be cleaned as carefully as possible. Then the men took the bottle and went, without a word, to the shoreline… They waded, looking over the expanse of the Pacific Ocean, until the water reached their underarms. Then they took a taste of the water, filled the bottle and sealed it carefully with a cork. [It] was their proof for the village that there really was an ocean. I asked cautiously whether it wasn’t just a part of the truth. No, they said, if there is a bottle of seawater, then the whole ocean must be true as well.”

Clear Water Sample: Jordan Pond, Acadia National Park, ME, 2012

The series, Clear Water Samples, began two years before reading this essay while traveling up the coast of California photographing borrowed containers filled with the Pacific Ocean. A few weeks later in Northern Italy, I collected water in specimen bottles, a pseudo scientific analysis of whether or not it was clear enough to set an artwork free. Two summers passed and soon there were sixteen samples existing as a physical object or a photograph. No longer where they all from the ocean, rather any lake or pool that was transparent.

Clear Water Sample: Neskowin, OR, 2012

I am from the Pacific Northwest and my relationship with place is defined by clear water. I learned how to swim in cold rivers on hot August days and every family vacation featured a blue expanse as the final destination. Standing on Galveston Island looking into the Gulf of Mexico was my first experience with a brown sea and I was repelled. It was there that I resolved never to touch water I could not see through. Years later, I moved to a Midwestern town where not only are the rivers brown but there are traces of mercury, PCB and E. coli flowing through the streams. 

Clear Water Sample: Triple Creek Park, Ucross, WY, 2013

I constantly search for clear water in an attempt to find the places where I belong.

My “truth of the ocean” lies in the fact that it still exists despite my minimal contact. It still elicits wonder and the small part I take away represents the whole of which I must remember. 

Autobiography: Artist Statement for "Echo of the Object" Exhibition

Autobiography started in 2002 when I collected my lunch bags because I hoped to make a book from the worn paper. Years later, they became a chronological marker that defines my life. There are four distinct parts to the series, two of which are exhibited here: objects used to mark time (lunch bags, swimsuits, hair, etc.) and items that pinpoint a specific event centered around change or loss (5 objects photographed before thrown away and teeth).

I come from a family of collectors and I was taught at a very young age the importance of possessions. They define what we like to observe, what we perceive ourselves to be, what we once lost, and what we want to remember. Objects are retained to remind us of the good times more often than the bad but every once in awhile, a possession is not disposed of even if its presence is filled with negativity.  

I save until an event occurs that indicates I should stop. It could be as life changing as moving to a new part of the country or as minute as my mother buying me a blue insulated lunch bag. I keep an item when I notice there is an excess. I try to discard these articles once photographed; this works in some pieces but not all. It is difficult throwing away the fingernails, the hair and the swimsuits as they are extensions of my body.

Everything is photographed in the style of studio documentary photography with a neutral background. If the bracelet is disintegrating leaving rust all over the white matboard, I want those details to be visible. If I photographed the objects on a cloudy day outdoors in Astoria, Oregon or in the studio at Ball State University, these differences must be apparent.

Christian Boltanski’s inventories from the 1970s in addition to Sol Lewitt’s Autobiography 1980 are important influences. I monumentalize the mundane, elevating sagging swimsuits and stained lunch bags into a higher status. These inconsequential objects are one aspect of my identity, easily disposable yet somehow kept.

"Pocket Notes" Submission

A couple weeks ago, I received an email from the curators of a project called Pocket Notes. The concept fascinated me: "we want the notes in your pockets that go through the wash, the notes on the nightstand, tucked beneath a glass of water on the kitchen table, in the glove compartment of your car or rediscovered in a book you took back to sell. we're looking for illegible diagrams, incoherent lists, definitions, histories, broken budgets and maimed poems."

Even though I scanned a note I carried around in my wallet until I dropped it in the Prairie Creek Reservoir while floating a cake (thus ruining it), I knew I had to submit images of all my lists. I photographed them this evening. Here is the latest incarnation with an artist statement (gasp):

On 2 June 2010, I started saving all my lists. Whenever I am confronted by a mass of objects, I have an irrepressible urge to count them. School was out of session and I was confused as to why I had to catalog so many activities. What was I forgetting? What needed to be done? Why was I constantly rewriting one when it became too messy to see what wasn't marked off? Every list I made was saved: items purchased at the grocery store, student participation in critiques, my goals to accomplish for the year (or the rest of my life), and states and countries I had yet to visit.

They are written on college ruled notepads, post-its, and recycled copy paper in Sharpie, black Uni-Ball fine point pen, and pencil. Everything was treated equally and nothing was immune if it comprised more than two items that needed to be checked off. 

Two years, four months, and five days later there are 806 of them with the date of completion inscribed on the back neatly bound in order. This evening when I photographed them for the first time in several months, I felt compelled to examine the earliest one. It was a list of art related activities I had to accomplish at school while preparing for a trip to Austin, Texas to float a Styrofoam cake in Barton Springs.

I don't know when I will stop collecting my lists but I foresee an unceremonious trip to the recycle bin (after extensive photographic documentation in the studio) when that occurs. In the meantime, they are a chronological marker that defines a mundane aspect of my life.

"Stalking Artists: In Pursuit of Home" (working title & statement)

Stalking Artists: In Pursuit of Home exists as an action, a collection, and a curiosity. I am interested in the public vs. private domain in the era of the Internet. Vito Acconci’s Following Piece and Sophie Calle’s Suite Vénitienne are inspirations. The art world’s acceptance of their acts of following random strangers in the general public until they disappear into a private location is an impetus behind my series.

It began in 2009 when a pilot from Sedona, Arizona heard me wonder out loud where James Turrell lived while guiding me to Roden Crater. He did a fly-by over Turrell’s compound and I started comparing the experience of seeing his house to my inability to name anywhere I have lived in the past five years “home.” In 2011, I wrote a letter to one of my favorite artists after finding his address online. A month later, while standing in front of Ed Ruscha’s house in Venice Beach tweeting about it, I realized that I wanted to see where famous artists lived and how their success is translated into the place they call home.

I have a set of rules that I adhere to when taking these photographs:

1) The artist must live there currently (preferably it is a single family dwelling).

2) I cannot trespass in any form, remaining on public property at all times.

3) The photographs are straightforward interpretations of the front of their house (almost like one would find on a realtor’s website). I will include details if I am comfortable enough that I will not be caught.

The artists that followed include: William Eggleston in Memphis, Tennessee (I requested to see it instead of Graceland); Arthur Tress in Cambria, California; and Julian Schnabel in Greenwich Village, New York. The failed attempts are also included in the series. I learned that Ann Hamilton lived one mile away from her studio location in Columbus, Ohio after the fact which produced a tangential introduction to my process. I am still waiting for Jeff Koons to move into his Manhattan palace and return to photograph it with every visit to New York.

I am interested in the Internet as a source for artistic pursuits. I map the land through sites like Google Street View as well as my actions through Twitter. It’s difficult to admit my curiosity in this subject to a public audience but when asked why I am doing this, the closest answer I can give is: If I keep searching for other artists’ homes, will I eventually come to find my own?

A new and improved "David C. Nolan and Marilyn Monroe" Artist Statement

This is a portrait of David C. Nolan whose name and address is stamped across Marilyn Monroe’s body in every image. Until recently, these photographs were stored in my family’s safety deposit box, acquired for $5 at an antique store in the 1980s. The dealer was a friend of my father’s who revealed a man brought them to the shop after discovering them at a recycling center in Boise, Idaho.

The story behind the man who owned them is unknown, though for several years, it was believed that Nolan was the photographer, but the true creators are Earl Theisen, Bert Riesfeld, and countless others who photographed films like The Seven Year Itch for publicity. Others are convinced Nolan was a publicist, as the backs of the images contain quotes and vital information, although, these are not typical statements and remain unattributed.

After editing and combining both sides of the photographs, I noticed details that were not apparent earlier. (DEAD) is written by a man who has aged significantly and has become unsteady. There are small, penciled dots along the back margins enabling Nolan to write in a straight line. Despite the perfection he strives to maintain, there are several spelling and grammatical errors.

In July 2011, I visited 104 Webster Street. It is now divided into a duplex and is one of the shabbiest houses surrounded by gentrification. I have since learned that Nolan owned roughly 300,000 photographs of women in various states of undress. He retreated to his basement where he labeled his collection, wrote captions on each photograph, and stored them in thousands of file drawers. After his death, his wife, horrified at this trove, gave them away to the first person that would remove them from the house. The images gradually circulated along the West Coast and 29 ended up in my family’s hands.

I am currently creating a counterpart to David C. Nolan’s photographs where I explore one woman’s collection of meticulously cutout cats (3,770 total) in the form of a giant scrapbook created in the 1940s. I am interested in the differences between one man and one woman’s fascination with the printed image and their obsessive methods of archiving and organization.

Autobiography: A Paragraph (not quite artist statement)

The ongoing series tentatively entitled Autobiography utilizes objects to chronicle the passing of time. Autobiography monumentalizes the mundane, elevating sagging swimsuits and stained lunch bags into chronological markers that define a life. A significant move is indicated by the changing collection (each city lived in requires a different object collected for that time period). Other important elements include: changes in employment, the bridge from adolescence to adulthood, and hereditary comparisons between generations.

"A Tale of Obsession: David C. Nolan and Marilyn Monroe" Artist Statement

This is a portrait of David C. Nolan whose name and address is stamped across Marilyn Monroe’s body in every image. Until recently, these photographs were stored in my family’s safety deposit box, acquired for $5 at an antique store in the 1980s. The dealer was a friend of my father’s who revealed a woman brought them to the shop after discovering them at a recycling center in Boise, Idaho.

The story behind the man who owned them is unknown, though for several years, it was believed that he was the photographer, but the true creators are Earl Theisen, Bert Riesfeld, and countless others who photographed films like The Seven Year Itch for publicity. Others are convinced David C. Nolan was a publicist, as the backs of the images contain quotes and vital information, although, these are not typical statements and remain unattributed.

After editing and combining both sides of the photographs, I noticed details that were not apparent earlier. (DEAD) is written by a man who has aged significantly and has become unsteady. There are small, penciled dots along the back margins enabling Nolan to write in a straight line. Despite the perfection he strives to maintain, there are several spelling and grammatical errors.

In July 2011, I visited 104 Webster Street. It is now divided into a duplex and is one of the shabbiest houses surrounded by gentrification. I can only assume David C. Nolan was a lonely man whose obsessive behavior became evident while labeling his Marilyn Monroe collection. There is sadness in this activity that isn’t dissimilar from the life of the actress portrayed in these photographs.

"Nine Fake Cakes & Nine Bodies of Water" Artist Statement

I photograph worn, dilapidated objects with a history that expresses loss and sadness. These forms are ultimately self-portraits, communicating to the viewer significant memories that I am unwilling to let go. Spring 2010 featured several personal and career related disappointments and for the first time in my artistic life, I was devoted to a project that’s main premise is beauty, escapism and desire. Complete immersion in finding inviting bodies of water to float Styrofoam and acrylic-tinted, caulk cakes was a coping mechanism to come to terms with loneliness and unhappiness with place. Cakes – both real and fake – appeared to make people happy and I wondered, most simply, if they could make me happy too.

Two of the most desirous objects in 20th century art are Wayne Thiebaud’s thickly textured paintings of desserts and Ed Ruscha’s photographs of azure swimming pools. They were my biggest inspirations as I sought ways of combining them, creating a mixed media spectacle of performance art, sculpture, and photography. Ed Ruscha is a frequent reference in my artwork and the number nine was chosen in homage to his famous series Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass but I expanded the locations to include not just artificial pools of water but natural springs, the ocean, freshwater lakes, and rivers.

I didn’t stray too far from the concept of object as self-portrait. The “Slice” depicts the part of me I left home in the Pacific Northwest (as photographed in the Canadian Southwest) when I moved to Indiana. The “Desert Sun” captures one of the happiest times in my life in one of my favorite places (Tucson, Arizona) while the “3-tier” photographed at Niagara Falls acknowledges one of the saddest. The cake deemed “Little Great Lakes”, the smallest of them all, shows an underlying determinism and hope as it bravely faces the incoming waves, only to be toppled over time and time again.

The sheer amount of help I received from friends and strangers, the bending of the rules to take many of the photographs, the postcards sent between each location, and the performances that ensued during the flotations are nearly as important as the images themselves. For merely nine prints, this is the most extensively documented project I have ever conceived. The cakes, many displaying the ruins of their initial floats (cracks, bleeding acrylic paint, missing decor), will be displayed on glass plates accompanying the photographs. An artists’ book will soon be published documenting all aspects of the process.

Despite its beauty, Nine Fake Cakes and Nine Bodies of Water comes from a dark place – one that was momentarily forgotten as I traveled across the country searching for pristine water. I returned with a product that commented on the illusion of what is fake and what is real, what is happy and what is sad, and what is desirous but unattainable.