Retail Complications

Through photography, drawing, and construction, “Retail Complications” brings together thrifted objects to test how they interact in front of the camera, and how different media, together with my digital toolbox, push the work into uncertain territories.

“Retail Complications” is a collection of interconnected photographs, drawings, publications, and displays, all overlapping into each other ’s territory while commenting on the selling, buying, disposing, and reclaiming of objects that infiltrate our lives. I began “Retail Complications” in 2024 as a Windgate Foundation Artist-in-Residence at the University of Arkansas Fort Smith. My explorations led me to humble thrift stores and secondhand shops. There, I drifted among damaged and donated goods, glimpsing traces of labor and loss, searching for objects that resonate with mystery without entirely revealing their past use.

Back in my studio, I moved these objects from the political and social framework of discard and reuse to the formal world of material, texture, and image. These objects combined to question how we perceive form and use language (or its absence) to create new narratives. How do nameless objects form relationships within the frame? The title “Retail Complications” became a touchstone. “Retail” reminded me that everything I’ve gathered was once new, purchased, eventually discarded or donated, and then sold once more to me. The “complications” were the objects’ disparate lives and conditions, and the entangled paths that have brought them together in my studio. They were once parts of something whole, and are marked by traces of their history. Some are remnants of businesses gone bust, or children grown and out the door, turmoil, a retirement, hard times. Or perhaps a move upwards, a restart, a cleaning up and clearing away.

I used the residency to expand my process in an unfamiliar place. The school provided a generous studio space, allowing me to work simultaneously on tabletop and large-scale photography, drawing, and digital work. This, in turn, led to constant discovery and surprise, which, for me, are two ideal conditions for creative work. The results created curious and noisy problems for my audience. But I insist that pleasure and disturbance can be tethered together.