Project Statement
Growing up I’d often feel like an outsider looking in, and whenever I did find myself “in” I would usually find comfort in my own company, never the one to try stand out. When I first started creating visual art the ordinary and mundane seemed to attract my attention far more then things that were loud and colorful. I was, and still am quite a “loner” and quiet person, finding myself drifting from conversations mentally, wrapped up in my own thoughts about something completely irrelevant to the topic. What was it about the mundane and supposedly boring subjects that kept attracting me ? Something I still cant fully define. But the more I started to take photos a recurring theme appeared, one of isolation, memories, the absence of presence. There is something quietly honest about a space after someone has left it, or an object worn down by years of use no one thinks to notice. The signs of human life but none to be seen, the way light bounces and shines on these mundane objects declaring itself as it enters. These are the things I find myself drawn back to — not because they are dramatic, but because they are real in a way that asks nothing of you. They don’t perform. They simply exist. I think my work is less about what is seen and more about what is felt. The long pause in a conversation. The room that still holds to memories of someone’s absence. I am not trying to show people anything they haven’t already experienced — I am trying to give them permission to stop and sit with it for a moment, the way I always have. In many ways, I am still that outsider looking in. But I have come to understand that the window itself — that quiet distance — is where I see most clearly.
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