Artist Statement
Overall my work has generally dealt with the intersections and interactions between things. The intersections between public and private, art and life, history and the present, among others, have always informed my work. I use mapping and indexing to recreate/reconstruct the space-time surrounding my life and other pockets of history. I make the photographs using preset conditions instead of my own ideas of photographic beauty. This is a stipulation that is hard to accept, but important for my process of understanding. I make art through a lens of a structured scientific inquiry basing this on my beginnings as an aerospace engineering student.
Over the last 3 years by walking/driving boundaries and using tools such as GPS, I have been photographically mapping history. I started with the treaties between indigenous peoples and the US government. As a counterpart to this project on the actual land and treaties, I traveled to Europe where I transposed maps of the North American colonies onto locations in Europe and then photographically mapped them. I researched my family genealogy and remapped then symbolically reclaimed the land they left. Last fall, I photographically mapped in Panama. This mapping was around the relationships within and between the American continents, the European and Native inhabitants, and the US and local governments. More locally, I mapped the lines between the Indianapolis Public School system and the bordering townships.
Throughout the last several years in addition to the photographic mappings, I have been making videos and doing installations and performances. I am interested in stop motion and time-lapse videos and their relation to historical and personal topics. The mapping of time over extended periods is a recurring theme in my video work. While I consider the photo mapping process to be a performance, I have had more traditional performances also. I have an ongoing series of performances where I investigate the intersections with art including, most recently, “The Marriage of Art to the Internet.”
All work on my site is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Feel free to use it for artistic or educational pursuits, but I would appreciate contact if you plan on using it.