This statement will be revised from time to time as the web site develops. It refers to work I am currently exploring. Some of the images on this site are a part of this newer developing work, but many of them are from an earlier period. Currently, the work is loosely categorized into six general areas: confinement, transformation, digits (digital work), nature, HIV/AIDS, and Tamarind prints. At this time, I consider these categories to be useful toward giving a structure to this site and as such see them as working categories only. There is a lot of overlap in the ideas.

Artist's Statement

Spring 2006

In an effort to learn more about myself and human behavior in general, I have been exploring the relationship between humans and “animals”. This exploration began with two different approaches: the first positing the theory that our relationship to other species, as well as the environment at large, is learned behavior, rooted in and reinforced by years of religious tradition, and summarily related to patriarchy and colonialism. The second aimed to examine our relationship to animals in more fundamental ways by looking at the similarities between humans and other species, embarking from the notion that humans are not above, but rather one with all of earth's creatures.

While those ideas continue to fuel my curiosity, this exploration has most recently led me to one rather fundamental aspect of this 21 st century relationship: that of the non-human animal as consumer object or victim of a consumerist and corporate world.

21 st century humans are voracious consumers of electronics and other goods. What does this say about our animal nature? What has happened to the wild in us? How has the corporate agenda altered our nature as animals? How does the corporate agenda affect the lives of our fellow species?

This series of digital collages focuses on the animal as consumer object, utilizing primarily appropriated imagery from the internet, where consumerism has propelled itself into an ultra impersonal all-time high, symbolizing the isolation of ourselves as a species from nature as it also disconnects us from real-time interaction between ourselves. In some images, I have juxtaposed the “businessman”, the red-tied symbol of “the corporation”, into roles associated with “the wild”. These pictures have been produced at roughly the size of a big-screen television to evoke some of the dominant products in our consumerist culture: electronics, video games, DVDs. The largest “digital painting” in this group of work recalls my interest in the role religion plays in affecting our relationship with other species, utilizing barbed wire and the color red to symbolize the passion and suffering of animals.

With the ever increasing encroachment of humans upon the habitats of other species, which more often than not contributes to the demise of said species, I believe it is more important than ever to try to understand, as honestly as we can, what kind of relationship we have created with our fellow animals. Knowing where we are now will help us to understand where we need to go to forge a more mutually beneficial relationship.