Shouting Fire

In "Shouting Fire" I tackle the United States' violent past and present. Working with objects that have been used as shooting targets, I assert connections with contemporary gun culture and colonialism, chivalry and patriarchy, and fear and hatred.

In my project Shouting Fire, I confront this country’s violent past and present by photographing objects that have been used as shooting targets and abandoned on Wyoming state land, which functions as an unregulated gun range. These remnants of violence serve as both evidence and metaphor, allowing me to explore broader cultural and historical narratives without directly depicting the shooters themselves.

The imagery references memento mori still lifes, moments in 20th-century pop culture, gendered advertising, Manifest Destiny, racialized violence, tropes of masculinity, and alt-right symbolism. These layers situate the project within a complex dialogue about history, identity, and the social forces that shape our understanding of violence.

While the work draws on documentary traditions, I intentionally use lighting and my interventions in the scenes to assert particular narratives. My arrangements transform these objects into symbolic and reflective sites, inviting viewers to consider what these materials reveal about American culture and its obsessions. In exhibition, I push the imagery even further from documentary roots, creating wallpaper out of my photographs of materials on the range to visually immerse the viewer in our violent but opulent cultural context.

Through Shouting Fire, I aim to probe deeper than surface-level demographics, asking viewers to confront the roots of cultural fascination with guns and power. The title itself evokes multiple meanings—as an order to shoot, a metaphor for vehement argument, and a reference to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s warning about speech in a crowded theater—while also pointing to the shifting legal and cultural relationship between the First and Second Amendments.
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I have exhibited this work widely and will continue to do so, with a particular focus on opportunities for installation-based practices. My funding needs are primarily oriented around exhibition expenses - inkjet adhesive printing, replacing damaged frames, crating and shipping.