Artist Statement

This is a draft of the statement I'm planning on using for my BFA exhibition. I thought it might be good to put up since I don't really talk seriously about the conceptual aspects of my work in this blog. I rattle off a few thoughts but don't really take the time to do anything but joke about it, partially because it's hard work to think and write concisely about it, but mostly because I am afraid to let people know my true thoughts. So maybe this will give you a snippet of an idea of what I'm thinking about, where I'm trying to let this work take me.





Living in abandoned houses (ideas of home)

These images are about the idea of houses and home. Houses are structures. They get built. They fall down. Home is something different. House is identifiable but home is unreachable. I can photograph the house I grew up in but I can never go home again.

In a place of transition in my own life I find that I am fascinated with the idea of houses and home. I choose to photograph in spaces that could be considered dwellings but in which I could not realistically exist. These houses are in all different stages. Construction, disuse or disrepair, perhaps ultimate demolition or absence. These houses indicate my fears, of destruction, fragility, impermanence, loss. I attribute a sense of rejection or abandonment by the house, the structure, this purely transitory place. Much like this place in my life where I find I can no longer be completely who I once was, the house displaces me. I do not belong there. Yet although I do not completely belong there, in the house, I seek to connect to it. I make for myself a temporary home.

A house is a structure. A physical structure, static, perishable. A home is an idea. Ever-changing, fluid, damageable but indestructible. While living in abandoned houses I realize ideas of home.

Probably going to be the postcard for my show. The dates are April 27 to May 22, opening reception Thursday April 30. If you want me to send you a show announcement postcard, send me your address. . . I'm going to try to get them out in the beginning of March.

In other news, Barack Obama is President!!

"With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."