excerpts - visual RESEARCH & WORK

Exhibition Statement Excerpt

I once spent a month traveling across New Zealand's North and South Islands. Along with college course research, I intended to make an experimental film and had completed numerous sketches before the trip. In truth, the many fragmented ideas I had gathered never connected, and I started recording footage without a clear sense of the film. Traveling in a camper van, I gradually woke up earlier each day and heard a riotous cacophony of birds singing before dawn. One song in particular stood out for its strange melody. I learned it was the song of the Bellbird, and for much of the rest of the trip, I set my alarm to record the Bellbird's morning song. These recordings led me to a new idea, and I created an entirely different film than I had initially intended.

I often reach a place on sustained projects where I can no longer remember what propelled me forward in the first place. If the initial idea, the origin, remains intact, it was strong enough to stand the test of time as new ideas developed through and around it. If it faded, what visually or sonically came after was much more interesting to me. In the case of the Bellbird audio recordings, they sparked an idea that anchored and carried through to the finished cut of the film. I think part of the reason is that I never fully understood why I was so drawn to them in the first place. I never want to understand fully.   

My work is anchored in metaphic narrativity. The desire to merge the pure, fleeting beauty of the physical world with the strange, flawed, disjointed, imaginative interior world of the mind intrigues me endlessly, and through this union, my work fundamentally comes into being.  

I find it compelling how an image or sound can lodge itself in the subconscious and open up an expansive idea. One image or idea builds and informs another. By inhabiting an expansive idea for a long time, one can arrive at a creative place they could never otherwise reach. I seek to materialize the ideas which are mysteriously present, ideas that I have made no conscious effort to evoke. I am not interested in forming an idea around a specific concept, meaning, or event; if the idea has depth, interpretations will naturally embed themselves. Ideas triggered this way (suddenly present without preconceived coaxing) hold the greatest mystery at the outset. What originates from a presumed understanding or a didactic goal is often void of mystery, because it is prodded into existence from a place of “knowing”. Outcomes are often narrow and predictable, even before they are explored. In a sense, everything is over before it even begins. I find work interesting to decipher only after it is finished.

Drawing and painting narrative images led me to write fiction for years, exploring what happened before and after the frozen, static moments I captured in graphite, ink, and paint. I then began working with moving images so that I could incorporate time and sound into the narratives. The scope of my work began to include full-scale and miniature set construction, three-dimensional sculpture and prop construction, costume and sound design, and numerous other production aspects associated with filmmaking. Though I have always viewed using moving images singularly, the way a solitary animator does, or a painter approaches working on a painting - a world away from the industry of filmmaking and being a director who orchestrates a film production.

I often work laterally, so each completed image is part of a greater whole. 

I have found the structure of the short film

to be one of the most interesting ways to bridge connections between disparate ideas and media. 

Landscape strongly influences my work.

A sense of place, discarded and unexpected objects, and geographical details form the foundation for imaginative interpretations and narratives.  Memories of past environments, the environment I live in now, and the landscapes I encounter while traveling all exert a simultaneous, continuous influence.  

A recurring motif (related to Romanticism in landscape painting) is a single individual in a vast exterior or confined to a relatively claustrophobic interior space. 

I am also fascinated by how memory, desire, and belief affect the psyche, and the reality one creates in their environment.

Art is the language that evokes and embodies that which cannot be rationalized or explained

and it is the mysterious, revelatory journey of visually exploring ideas

that keeps me fascinated and dedicated to the process of creating art.