Sketch 4 I.D.
The Sketch 4 I.D. series has been developed out of an interest in the marks and scars on trees. Creating montages from these shapes by combining them with human skin and text, there is an investigation of the physicality of surface and the process of aging. Ultimately, all my work is about marking, decay and the formation of identity. These images function like archeological remnants – a deconstruction of both text and image recombined to create a new context. They are fragments of the everyday: the trees are surrogates for the body while the text, derived from stories and letters, manifests as trace memory. As identifiers, they are unformed signifiers – sketches where words and image get lost within each other.
17”x11” inkjet prints on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Fine Art Matte, 2009-13
Road Work
Killed at the margins, the deer indicate a violent intersection of road to land. So often unseen, their chilling beauty – broken necks, limbs twisted in ballet-like gestures – silently mark the view. They become metaphor for our uncomfortable relationship with the environment – a demarcation of nature to culture. I began photographing dead deer because I found myself fascinated by the abject beauty they represent. Like memorials set at the side of the road to mark the site of traffic accidents, the presence of the deer scar the landscape.
37” x 47” inkjets on canvas, wrapped, 2003-5
Fort Centennial
During May of 2002 I was invited to participate in the artist residency program at Centrum Center for the Arts and Education at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, Washington. During this residency, I photographed the fort's coastal defenses. My visit to the fort happened to coincide with its centennial anniversary. Although the fort was state-of-the-art when construction began in 1902, because of changing technology and the advent of air warfare, almost as soon as the fort was finished in 1908, it was rendered obsolete and it never saw action. Because of this quickly changing technology, forts of its kind were systematically shut down leaving Fort Worden as the last one built and one of the best preserved, an outdated and ironic marvel ushering in the 20th century.
My primary goal when photographing the fort was to investigate the relationship of the structure to the environment of the coastal peninsula. The fort is a relic, outpaced by the natural world and reflecting a futile attempt to protect a nation from an unseen opponent. It is also a tourist attraction, where visitors explore its ruins and history. The erection of the fort and its decades of use and subsequent decay have marked the landscape. Concurrently modern and obsolete, the fort presents a paradox, seeming to exist outside of history, at once present and ancient. My photographs explore the beauty of structure, environment and disintegration, evoking this sense of presence and memory.
11”x17” pigment prints on archival Hahnemuhle textured paper, 2003
