Statement
Watching movies has led the direction of my current studio practice, which is a response to my interest in movies and movie watching. Through my artwork, I want to probe the intensity of the movie watching experience and explore the affection one can have for a movie – the relationship between an enthusiastic devotee and movies. I aim to affect my viewer by having them either participate in that affection or understand and feel the relationship between movies and the affiliated cultures that revere them.
I take hold of images, characters, tropes, movements, techniques, and my own personal memories from movies and allow them to coalesce into an alternate, and sometimes familiar, existence. What was once a motion picture has now been turned into a synecdochic relative, emerged from the amalgamations of the creative process. I am pointing to relationships and developing conversations between a viewer and what surrounds cinema and its various subcultures. I present conceptual layers of satire, sophistication, reverence, hyperbole, and criticism funneled through accessible subject matter to help encourage cultural discourse.
Looking at my work can be like a conversation with a video store clerk. The work functions in a gallery the way a clerk in a video store makes film recommendations to a customer - that is, a video store clerk who’s passionate about movies. The clerk’s qualifications to recommend movies may not extend past the mere fact that they love movies and have seen a wide variety of them, but their comments are sincere. The clerk gives a warm subjective opinion about the movies they're excited about and cold snark-filled reactions toward the movies they take umbrage with. The clerk’s recommendations offer a variety of favorites, guilty pleasures, highbrow works, thrilling action scenes, moments of sentiment, nostalgia, interesting film trivia, favorite characters, metaphors, and analogies (Avatar is Dances with Wolves meets Fern Gully). The conversation isn't always deep or thought provoking and the statements may be frivolous and filled with hyperbole, but they are honest and affectionate opinions about movies.
Watching movies has led the direction of my current studio practice, which is a response to my interest in movies and movie watching. Through my artwork, I want to probe the intensity of the movie watching experience and explore the affection one can have for a movie – the relationship between an enthusiastic devotee and movies. I aim to affect my viewer by having them either participate in that affection or understand and feel the relationship between movies and the affiliated cultures that revere them.
I take hold of images, characters, tropes, movements, techniques, and my own personal memories from movies and allow them to coalesce into an alternate, and sometimes familiar, existence. What was once a motion picture has now been turned into a synecdochic relative, emerged from the amalgamations of the creative process. I am pointing to relationships and developing conversations between a viewer and what surrounds cinema and its various subcultures. I present conceptual layers of satire, sophistication, reverence, hyperbole, and criticism funneled through accessible subject matter to help encourage cultural discourse.
Looking at my work can be like a conversation with a video store clerk. The work functions in a gallery the way a clerk in a video store makes film recommendations to a customer - that is, a video store clerk who’s passionate about movies. The clerk’s qualifications to recommend movies may not extend past the mere fact that they love movies and have seen a wide variety of them, but their comments are sincere. The clerk gives a warm subjective opinion about the movies they're excited about and cold snark-filled reactions toward the movies they take umbrage with. The clerk’s recommendations offer a variety of favorites, guilty pleasures, highbrow works, thrilling action scenes, moments of sentiment, nostalgia, interesting film trivia, favorite characters, metaphors, and analogies (Avatar is Dances with Wolves meets Fern Gully). The conversation isn't always deep or thought provoking and the statements may be frivolous and filled with hyperbole, but they are honest and affectionate opinions about movies.