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Utah's Wild Plants: Light Boxes When hiking throughout Utah I rarely carry a camera. Instead I collect –plants, water, rocks— engaging with my surroundings. Referencing the first photographic book, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, by Anna Atkins (1843), Utah’s Wild Plants: Light Boxes is a sample of my plant collection. When installed, the glass cyanotype photograms of plants light up as the viewer approaches. |
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(un)known objects This series is my attempt to resuscitate a dead film archive at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. The term “dead archive” refers to documentation materials that are no longer used or maintained. I’ve appropriated the archive and carefully chemically altered the prints using the chromoskedasic Sabatier process. Ignoring my professional ethic to strictly document museum objects, the photographs walk the line separating a document from an abstraction, combining my work and my life. |
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Proof A proof sheet is a tool used by photographers to quickly see what images were captured on a roll of film. If you look carefully you can see the photographer;s thought process and how they navigated their environs. It is the documentation of the observation process.I use a roll of film, shoot each negative as a single intentional image, and then assemble it according to the sequence it was photographed recreating the object in terms of how it was observed. The negatives are contact printed to emphasize the sequence, the evidence of observation.
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Veritcal Landscapes In western art the horizon line is often the focus of landscape works. Large expanses of land and brilliant skies without man-made clutter are emphasized. In eastern landscapes, Chinese and Japanese scroll paintings for example, the sky/ground relationship is shown vertically. The focus shifts from open spaces to condensed, intimate surroundings, often of mountain peaks and monastic temples. Vertical Landscapes uses this eastern philosophy on the landscape of northern Utah. Each piece consists of 7 to 11 black and white prints mounted together vertically. The result is a 180-degree vertical view of the landscape, incorporating roads, telephone poles, and other man-made objects found in the landscape. |
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Experiments I use the landscape as a familiar setting for the chemical reactions. I print the images in the darkroom, painting on the developer and fixer to chemically alter the image. The result is a composition based on the traditional and fundamental chemical reactions of the photographic process –writing with light. |
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This Was the End of Something How is it that one day life is orderly & you are content, a little cynical perhaps, but on the whole just so. And then without warning you find the solid floor is a trap door & you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain. That was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was --laying in bed with all the sad sounds, for about twelve seconds. I took a camera to keep things from changing on me. I took a camera to anchor a month of complication, intimidation, dehydration, fascination, inebriation, & starvation to the ground. I talk about it as if I knew what I was doing. This was the end of something.
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Project: Reclaiming the Post Office From 2005 through 2008, I made and sent postcards to 35 people across the country. From silly to personal, below are a few of my favorites from the project. |