Artist Statement

My practice consists of bookmaking, relief printing, intaglio, screen-printing, and various forms of photo-based printmaking, including photo lithography and polymer gravure. My printmaking practice is largely inspired by my film photography. I shoot thirty-five millimeter, medium format, and large format film. Using photographs and photographic imagery in my printmaking allows me to fully capture a sense of motion and energy that a lot of my work in informed by. The feeling that is produced from these moments is something that is always relevant to my life, inside and outside of my practice. The liveliness and the inspiration that is produced in such energetic and community-based moments keeps me moving in all personal and artistic parts of my life. That feeling and motion is what drives most of my work of the last two years.

I define this feeling that I refer to as an overwhelming feeling of freedom, passion, and inspiration. It’s a will to be moved and to move others. It can be seen in as many different things as you can imagine. Losing your inhibitions watching your favorite band, reading a book that touches your soul, pushing yourself to be vulnerable in at least one conversation you have a week, driving until the sun comes up, an acting performance that you can’t get out of your head three days after watching it, dancing in your kitchen. It’s can be anywhere at any time, but it’s that feeling you get when something touches you and fosters genuine human connection.

My practice gravitates towards landscape imagery, western imagery, and live music photography. I travel on a regular basis and because of that I have the opportunity to see and photograph landscapes different from what I see when I’m at home. American western imagery is an interest that can be traced back to my childhood experiences with my grandparents. Calling back on imagery that was profound to me as a child has been a vehicle to think about aging and illness. I am always shooting shows and those images allow me to capture that passion and feeling that my practice is so driven by. Printmaking allows me to capture those moments, distill it, and then to build on it. While photography is a significant and important part of my practice, printmaking lets me construct an image through layers and manipulate it through materials in a way that photography cannot quite reach for me. I can create a world separate from the photograph with printmaking. Printmaking and its inconsistencies leave room for much more chance and accidents, which only adds to the passion and spontaneity that I work to represent.

Bookmaking has allowed me to push my work in a more narrative sense, along with allowing me to bring my writing practice into conversation with my visual work. My most recent books have been interested in the integration of text and image and the relationship those two have on a page. Bookmaking appeals to my archiving sensibilities; I am able to document, articulate, and work with these moments in a more extensive way.

My work strives to represent a feeling that keeps me inspired, that exhibits passion and liveliness, shown through motion and form. Those feelings are what keep me driven and moving forward as an individual and as an artist. My practice seeks to do justice to those displays of liveliness. I aspire to push the boundaries of my work by raising questions about one’s greatest joys in life. What makes you feel alive? What makes you feel driven? What makes you feel inspired, full of love, vulnerable, and moved? I ask myself these questions all the time, and I aim to urge other people to do the same, whether they are viewing my work or not.