In Plain Sight

Visual art can be a defense against self censorship. My work seeks to counter photography’s myth of capture and to encourage a personal choice (actually as many choices as possible) to practice a more intentional observation of what is around us.

Each time we accept made things without at least some basic level of consideration of the intention communicated in the making we are ceding a piece of our understanding of our world—and the stakes are huge since we live in constant and complete contact with made things. Everything we see is a made thing. Those pixels. That two foot long receipt for your three items at the drugstore. The items themselves. The drugstore. The corporation that owns the drugstore. That landscape, so sublime, and wild, and exquisitely natural, is a made thing even if it has, miraculously, escaped the direct touch of human hands. When we see it in person we are viewing something that has been shaped by our actions, by our inactions, by the tales we have told around communal fires or turned into song or cave painting or book, by how we surrounded it or cut it off from or fouled what it relies on. When we see it any other way it is a triply made thing, once by forces we shaped, once in its representation, and since it isn’t just the things around us that are constructions, by the thought structures that inform--or more accurately, deform--how we see the world.

Visual art is a capable defense against self censorship, alerting us to what we edit out of our view or ignore, what we leave blurry or obscured or just plain avoid altogether—and to what our cultures’ thought structures camouflage. My work seeks to force a choice on observers to look more deeply at all that is before them in both art and in life. So increasingly it uses both presentation and composition to let the observer know that there is more to see—and to entice them to do so. I employ presentations that inhibit the observer’s opportunity to view the entire work at once or that use motion or sound to compel longer observation, and compositions that beg close up examination of detail.

My practice originates in layering of images, generally photographic but occasionally including printmaking, collage, or painting. Layering reflects my sense of how personal understanding connects the new to the known. Equally important, layering provides a blank space to explore social and aesthetic issues and at the same time provides a range of transparency, texture, and color unattainable in most single-layered lens-based work

I am uncomfortable with calling my work altered or manipulated. It is intentional and made. Even the most straightforward snapshot is a made thing. I want my work to at least whisper to viewers that what they see was made and requires questioning and interpretation--and that it is up to them weigh its meaning, its reliability, and how it connects with their lives.