As an artist, my goal is to capture an elegiac quality in subjects both animate and inanimate. A phrase which, I believe, encapsulates my most recent work is “the presence of absence.” What I continually strive against in my artistic endeavors is ‘to make pretty pictures;’ rather, I’d prefer to create compelling, thoughtful images.
The central theme of my work is memory: what informs memory, how does it change over time, why is that memories are often romanticized… or how is it that nostalgia or trauma often color memory accordingly. Other related aspects of memory in my work involve questions of identity, autobiography, and belief. I think that the ethereal quality of the work makes these aspects of the pieces available to the viewer…hopefully without too much additional explanation or guidance. More importantly than anything related to my drawings and photographs, I wish to have them speak for themselves.
The structure that I’ve chosen to depict in a recent, ongoing series is the house in which my grandfather grew up. The farm on which this house sat had been in my family for over 100 years. As a young boy, I spent a great deal of time there with my grandfather as he carried out various tasks required by farm life. After his death, it fell into disrepair due to lack of maintenance. My effort was to document the farm’s slow but certain decay as well as vandalism that had taken place over time. The house was torn down in the last year, so the images contained in the portfolio “Statenville 2010″ are the final images in the series.
I have recently embarked on capturing images from another place which holds a great deal of memories for me. It is the home of my remaining grandparent (my paternal grandmother). At 91, she recently moved from her house into an assisted living facility although her home is still furnished as it has been for as long as I remember. The idea that I’m attempting to illustrate is a place which, for me, stands for comfort and stability. I spent a great deal of time there as a child and as a college student. It has always been a kind of haven from stress and issues one experiences while growing up. I wish to convey her life-long religious conviction as well as her great fascination with birds—a facet of her life that impacted me a great deal as I developed a similar fascination and respect for avian life. The color images of her home, I think, convey a sense of memory that I believe most will relate to in that the decor has a typical “grandmotherly-feel” to it. The home, simultaneously, has a sense of loss or that something is missing: is it lived in, or once lived in? For me, the home is a repository of many memories of events and times that ultimately affected who I have become as an adult.
In an upcoming project, I am making an effort to connect with another aspect of my family’s history. I will be documenting and exploring other memories of growing up in the American South—specifically those of spending time with my maternal grandfather as he worked in North Carolina’s tobacco industry. As a result of the many changes which have occurred in that industry, the traditional jobs held by many in that field no longer exist. Among those most heavily impacted by the many changes in the industry are the growers and their families. The culture of tobacco in the American South has been changed forever by the stigmatization surrounding use of tobacco products in our society. The purpose of my research and artistic endeavors as they relate to this topic is by no means a “glamorization” of tobacco use or of tobacco culture, per se. The purpose of my efforts will be to visually illustrate the changes in the lives of those involved in the farming and acquisition of the product. I am working with my mother to contact many of my grandfather’s colleagues and co-workers (many of whom are also relatives) to photograph the places where they grew and harvested tobacco and conducted business. I will document those places where my grandfather spent summers “on the tobacco market.” I have traveled to some of those places in recent years and I am aware that some of them still exist (although many are now abandoned).
The fundamental goal of this project is to create a body of work which demonstrates the humanity of those who have devoted much of their lives to growing a crop that has significantly decreased in demand, thereby lowering their standards of living and their hopes of prosperity. I generally would resist the temptation to compare my work with that of others. However, for the sake of reference, I would suggest that the inspiration for much of my work is someplace in the realm of the Zen-like minimalism of Minor White and the stark, revelatory imperfection of the human condition exposed by the WPA photographers (i.e. Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange). In capturing images of those people and their places as I’ve described them here, my hope is that the images I create will exhibit qualities similar to those that I’ve created from my paternal grandfather’s family home.
Finally, in my most recent drawings, I am taking found (or “discarded”) phrases and incorporating them into larger compositions. The inspiration came from some graphs and assembly instructions that I had laying on the floor of my studio. They had been walked on and were pretty dirty overall. The idea struck as I looked and saw the words and diagrams with dirt and footprints over the top of them. I began to realize that I had (both in my head and written down on scraps of paper) saved words and phrases that I had heard or seen in various situations. Those (sometimes) unique combinations needed to be utilized artistically. So, the new work is about discarded language and overheard phrases that may or may not have any intrinsic use or meaning; however, when read, the phrases typically conjure a visual response in the viewer’s mind. So, the new work, although somewhat stylistically dissimilar to the images found in the “drawings” and “photography” sections of the site, keeps intact the ideas of absence and memory… in this case, absence of context or immediate recognition of meaning of phrases remembered from past experiences.