* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
My projects originate from a mixture of inspirations: Science fiction, architecture, nano and biotechnology, surrealist landscapes, industrial installations, quack theories of reality and sundry other contraptions and quasi-science-like things. What intrigues me about all of these things is the gray area between a vision informed by objectively collected facts and a world of fantasy that arises when we attempt to piece the facts together. Most compelling to me is the relationship we have with the tools we use to model images of the unseen: When the model itself becomes what we expect to see and the tools we’ve developed to aid our vision begin to drive the way in which we imagine.
The process for my projects begins with automatic writing; a tool of analysis that relies upon subjectivity and the absurdities of free association, and I like to focus this method on words that are simultaneously personal and publicly shared-maybe the name of a city or a favorite food. My method is to write down every conceivable association I have with these words, and to follow the web of relationships between the different associations. The writing becomes a generator of secret images, providing me with the raw materials to build my projects: the shapes, colors, and decisions of form that become embedded within the work. The projects themselves include drawings and audio works. The drawings are digitally modeled and painstakingly hand drawn on multiple layers of Mylar, becoming an analog of the digital process. The audio projects use the same list of associations to guide the choices of sounds, which I then do my best to make using only my voice. I view this use of my voice as something akin to the act of drawing in a sonic sense: Both involve a unique signature and both can be used to mimic, model, or even invent reality.
By choosing automatic writing as the ground for my work, my intention is to depict a world of collapsing subjects and objects, compressing the spaces of public, private, and invisible codes; highlighting the often colliding and congealing absurdities that drive the forms of our seemingly conscious constructions.
