SIGNALS (BLOOMINGTON)
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Dates2025 - 2025
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Author
- Location Bloomington, United States
“Signals (Bloomington)” is a site-specific installation composed of nearly 1000 individual photo prints. Abstracted forms float and gather into constellations. As each image gives up its singular identity, it melts into a larger cosmos.
SIGNALS (BLOOMINGTON)
2025, 12 ft x 10 ft
Machine and pigment inkjet photo prints, push pins, and homasote board mounted on a freestanding gallery wall
An important part of my photographic practice involves creating constellations of form within large architectural spaces. I am fascinated by the way a multitude of individuals can coalesce into an environment. The forms themselves float as solo vessels that search for — and sometimes find —their tribe. As each image gives up its singular identity, it melts into a larger cosmos.
This was always my intention when I began working with abstraction. I hoped the work would be experienced bodily as something a viewer could approach and imagine a deeper, sensory space. Architectural scale can do that.
The installation I am presenting, “Signals (Blomington),” was built on-site in Indiana University’s Grunewald Gallery, and is my most recent public work.
Over the previous summer, I made 5000 photographs in my studio using simple materials collected and scavenged over the years. I now have bins full of metal, plastic, glass, paper, toy parts, and disassembled machinery; materials whose properties and forms I study through the camera lens. This subtractive method replaces nameability with pure sensation.
For me, the most important aspect of these installations is my desire to build them on-site, without preplanning or expectations. I bring the entire set of prints and a bucket of pushpins and stay alert as I consider each option.
The process requires days of concentration. “What is the wall’s present state?” “What do I add next?” Now my work becomes additive. Each installation develops from the smallest decision outward, slowly stretching to the ends of the space I’ve been given. There is logic in every move, but that logic is fluid and continually adjusts to new circumstances.
Although the work is realized by merging the form and color, the pins and individual prints remain present and in evidence. They are the bricks and mortar of my photographic architecture.
(The accompanying portfolio includes images of the full installation in the gallery space, installation details, a selection of individual prints, and two process shots of the installation-in-progress.)
