This series began with the idea of re-pur­pose. The process I’ve used is a huge con­duc­tor of my con­cept. The cyan­otype takes what would be real­i­ty and doc­u­men­ta­tion, in this case, into some­thing absurd. I’ve recy­cled old film images into dig­i­tal art to com­bine them with some­thing of the present. With this, we know that what we are look­ing at isn’t real­i­ty, but it is a con­di­tion in the world that goes unno­ticed. Because the images span years, it con­nects us to the very real and ongo­ing rela­tion­ship peo­ple have with the land.

In my life, the biggest moti­va­tion for mak­ing art is the human con­di­tion that is to cre­ate, desire, inter­act, and live. Cre­at­ing art is a sim­ple act, yet one that involves skills as a thinker and crafts­man. The act and process of cre­ation is much more a part of art than the final result. You can empha­size the rela­tion to the land through the man­u­al labor required of cer­tain art, much like the manip­u­la­tion of the bor­der with a brush.

Desire, for unex­plained rea­sons, has remained some­thing that dri­ves and moti­vates us in life. Through my art, I can give peo­ple some­thing that they would not have been exposed to else­wise. There is a sort of self­ish­ness, then, in the abil­i­ty to make peo­ple look, think, inter­act, and react through my art. Inter­ac­tion is about the sit­u­a­tions the art cre­ates. This inter­ests me, in that it deals with social issues behind how peo­ple view art; how they inter­act, how they behave and what their own life can con­tribute to a piece.

The fourth human con­di­tion I’ve men­tioned is to live. When looked at with a philo­soph­i­cal lens, we dis­cov­er it is nec­es­sary to where we are, but bet­ter yet, where we want to be. As humans, we try to sur­pass nature. As this is an impos­si­bil­i­ty, it is of inter­est to my art. Nature is a force we can­not con­trol, there­fore, we should step back and try bet­ter to inte­grate our­selves in it, affect­ing it as lit­tle as pos­si­ble. In reach­ing this under­stand­ing that humans lead an absurd life, I have been able to move to a peace with the things I cre­ate, and the process­es that make this hap­pen.

This final moti­va­tion is what inspired the series before you. In this work, it’s rec­og­niz­ing the earth’s per­ma­nence, our imper­ma­nence, and how that imper­ma­nence can teach us to tread more light­ly. The images in this series are meant to bring that con­nec­tion to the sur­face, so as to warn us of the impor­tance of inter­act­ing with nature.