homework

My students had their final critiques this week.  In advance of the crits they asked if I would (read: challenged me to) make something to show along with them.  I accepted the proposition and made four collages.  I hope I get an A.

Here is my artist statment:

Truth of the matter was, stories was everything and everything was stories.
Everybody told stories. It was a way of saying who they were in the world.
It was their understanding of themselves.  It was letting themselves know how
they believe the world worked – the right way and the way that was not so right.
-Novelist Harry Crews on growing up in the South, 2003

I believe my work is inextricably bound to my experience of growing up in the South, specifically to the unique tradition of storytelling that exists there.  While not adhering to the traditional structure of narrative by eschewing plot, conflict and resolution I seek to open relationships between fragments of content – combining images to form ad-hoc narratives, representations of memories and embodiments of fears.  The pieces and parts work together as an amalgamation of connotations and allusions that describe an archeology of the present through a personal vernacular that is tangential and ambiguously melancholic.