I produced the video SO MANY WINDMILLS in 2021 as a response to the pandemic and the social unrest of the time. At the center of the piece is a video depicting a woman’s desperate struggle to escape a perilous situation on a rescue chair lowered from above. The repetitive and disjointed nature of the video serves as a metaphor for the cyclical and relentless nature of anxiety-inducing circumstances, inviting the viewer to reflect on the shared experiences of fear, hopelessness and resilience.
Layered behind this central video, a montage of appropriated soft-focus Black Lives Matter protests and covid hospitalization footage gradually emerges, adding another dimension to the narrative. Eventually, these segments become more in focus and defined, symbolizing the importance of gaining a clearer understanding of these pressing issues over time.
SO MANY WINDMILLS aims to foster conversations about our current unease and uncertainty. I hope to evoke empathy and raise awareness around the anxiety-inducing realities of our world, both on an individual and societal level.
To create Contact, I used an inexpensive surveillance camera to record honeybees in a garden. Distorting the video and heightening the floral colors, I created a visually luscious landscape that elevates the mundane backyard activity of pollination to seemingly monumental proportions. I then layered the personal footage with scientifically and culturally significant audio and video recordings from early moon-to-earth transmissions. By bringing commonplace and historical events into direct contact with one another,I raise questions about how we select and edit certain pieces of information to build the stories we tell about ourselves.
One journey covered 238,000 miles and ended successfully to rich acclaim. At the same time, after taking a wrong turn, another journey covered 4 miles and ended in death and national disgrace. SPLASHDOWN is the second in my Apollo trilogy and explores two American historical events bound together in time. Utilizing acquired imagery and filming miniature objects scaled to monumental size, I've created a metaphor for unpredictable rewards and consequences, and redefined notions of risk.
As in Horizontal and Vertical Water is a three channel video installation that addresses the physical states of water and the state of water as commodity in the American West.
The central channel shows a case of bottled water labeled with iconic snow-capped mountains, engulfed in flames. The contained water is transformed from liquid to explosive steam. Vertical water is represented not with a beautiful mountain waterfall, but at the outtake of a water treatment plant discharging its processed water into the South Platte River. Winter, spring, summer, fall, day or night, the volume of water is constant and cost effective. In the third channel, an Olympic speed skater slices rhythmically across frozen water, leaving the sound of metal on ice. The image splits and merges, the colorful patterns forming fluid forms of their own.
In As in Horizontal and Vertical Water, water is always on the move, even in its frozen state.
GREAT WESTERN WATER TRICK intercuts issues around the politically tinged topic of water in the arid American west with the artist’s family history. With interviews of experts, friends and the artist’s brothers as a backdrop, the history of water in the west, as both asset and commodity, is viewed with both insight and humor.
Disguised as a documentary, “Too Perfect To Ignore” explores the ways in which our knowledge of the past is dictated by the process of editing and curating. In other words, how a few select professionals dramatically affect the way we see history and ourselves. The famous photograph of the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima during World War II serves as example of this subjective editorial process.
In my narrative video art piece WHY ARE BOYS ALWAYS RIGHT?, I explore the complexities of human relationships and how authentic connections are impacted by the telephone which is an instrument that both unites and estranges. The telephone takes center stage in the video as a catalyst for disconnection and lies. It serves as both a lifeline and a barrier to truth as my girlfriend and I appear to navigate conversations cloaked in half-truths and the seemingly insurmountable wall of miscommunication.
As the narrative unfolds, it becomes apparent that the discussion is not what it appears to be; it is, in fact, a meticulously staged performance, a fabricated exchange riddled with half-truths and concealed emotions. Or is it?
Gray Zone is a poignant investigation of how culturally constructed opinions can become the standards by which people judge one another. The work attempts to explore the tendency of individuals to assume sexual preference about others based solely on superficial details such as appearance It is an intimate portrait of men discussing personal issues of sexual identity and specifically how “straight” men are compelled to communicate their sexual preference to other men. This narrative and didactic approach to art-making allowed me to present issues and concepts that were personally relevant when I made the piece over 30 years ago.
