Progress and examples of ongoing work for MFA Program
1.30.25
Working on a new idea, aiming for a zine as an exercise. Anticipating it to be an accordian book called “How to unclench a fist”
Residency after Semester 1
Crit studio, January 2-12
December, 2024
Gathered a lot of imagery and began playing with ideas about collage and scale, and pulled together a couple of pieces. The elongated one is called Bolero and the wider one is called November Boy.
Free write as well to accompany Bolero:
An interest. Soft, as Lamb’s Ear.
Held in a returning state of ritual—some type of performance we could dance to
with Bolero loops and a spotlight.
Something old. When the Hunt was a reason to leave safety.
A walk about the perimeter, following a scent that snuck inside
to squeeze some kind of desire with lust.
Circling a point. One never landed on but seen.
A satellite admired; wandering debris, rich in ore, caught briefly in orbit
to be righted and returned to space.
This interest—soft as Lamb’s Ear.
11.11.24
Detail shots of Omar. I’ve become very taken by his stretch marks and how they seem to catch light differently—more eager to reflect than the rest of his body. I use these later on to push the limitations of the film grain and blow them up to almost over-examine these traits.
10.29.24
Richie found a leaf on his walk a week or two ago and brought it home because something about it reminded him of me. We kept it as it dried out and Omar kept playing with it every time he came over, so I just decided to introduce it as a prop for the shoot because something about it’s “metallic” quality reminded me of Omar’s stretch marks or the oils on his skin.
10.18.24
Began shooting Omar, who we were jointly fooling around with. He later goes on to become something more for us and our relationship and puts to question how to move safely in this space which seems to have no parameters or identifiers. For about a month, Omar becomes both a muse and a source of tension.
10.10.24
I’ve begun really considering the map, what it means and its relationship to us as people but also flesh. How it conveys information and is such an inundation of data but only holds value if you’re actively searching for something, otherwise it’s just a wash of overwhelm. I incorporate my sketches and notes of my preshoot and then the photograph that I made after it, collapsing both space (the intention and the product) and time (the early idea and the result).
10.8.24
Shooting HP5 @ 1600 for indoor shots at home after work. Just getting back into using the Pentax67 again, focusing on what’s immediate to me. Self portraits, my partner, eventually some of the guys he and I have over, and recreating/capturing our routines and patterns together. Looking for the sweetness and casual comfort.
9.15.24 - 9.23.24
Did a shoot with Ryan Rudowitz (Rude Polaroids) when he was visiting a mutual friend, Jamieson Edson, from New York. I’d been wanting to meet him and shoot with him for a while, so it was cool to get together. We mostly just geeked out about polaroids and didn’t really make anything that I’m particularly happy with, but I also brought my Pentax to try shooting for that and got a couple images I liked. Additionally, Richie and I went to a wedding and I made this picture of him on the bed of the cabin we stayed in.
8.20.24 - 9.11.24
Polaroids from the end of summer
In mid-August, my partner, Richie, and I went up to his family’s camp in upstate NY for about 11 days. This is our one vacation of the year, so we try and make sure we make the time for it. We usually split time with some friends or his family staying there as well, but we had the cabin to ourselves this year for the entire time. We mostly spent all our time on the dock reading every day, which is really all we want to do—unplugged and unbothered time to sit in the sun and read through stacks of books (and in my case, a list of essays for school). When it came ti picture making, I made the shots I found based purely on the circumstance, aiming not to facilitate or construct any scene or image, save for maybe one or two. Though it was of course a relaxing experience to have this time to unwind before both my upcoming semesters at work and at school began, it was nice to simply lean into the leisure and pleasure of the location and our own bodies alone at the water.
8.7.24
Continuing to slowly make more polaroids
I have definitely slowed down my physical production of capturing images—I haven’t had a ‘photoshoot’ with someone in a couple months I think, so it’s been hard to feel like I’m still making work. Although I’ve begun carrying around my SX70 with me in my bag and around on walks and errands, as well as being more cognizant to pull it out around the house and when we have friends over, so I’m getting back into making shots. Here are just a couple of the images I’ve been making of ‘normal life stuff’. I also dusted off the old Pentax67 and finished a roll, so I’ll have that back from the lab at some point soon hopefully, and will put any decent shots I get from it here.
8•1•24
New plexi-image: Uproot, 6 panels of plexi, 4”x5” each
Below, new assembly of images
I wanted to try working with an image with greater information and clarity, so I used an image I’d made with my Pentax67. I’ve found at this scale, the quality of the image plateaus at.a certain point, no matter how much information get packed into the bitmap. I may try making this image or another like it at a larger scale and see if it’s any more legible. Additionally, I find the image starts to fall apart and lose legible light after 5 panels, and no matter which panel becomes the 6th it’s always hard to see. So I think 4 or 5 panels would be the sweet spot if I continue working with plexi in this scale.
After I played with the documentation, and removing the figures from the scene, I wanted to play with that idea but include the figures from the other images I’ve produced so far. I think there’s something there that I’m drawn to, and again simply need to push it and ask myself “why”. There are qualities of Sakura Kelley’s unfixed inkjet prints I’m drawn to and would like to see if I can access qualities of image degradation in this medium, Liz Deschenes and her color panel works (which sort of feel too minimalist for me), and have also discovered Letha Wilson’s photo/sculpture installations. Though the content of that work is wildly uninteresting to me, I am drawn to the photographic integration she plays with in her sculptures. This sort of 3D photo collage may be a direction I experiment with next (also thinking about Gonzalez Torres and his jigsaw puzzle photo pieces). I’m seeing this somehow as a weird intersection between photographs and the photobook/book layout, in just the ‘collage’ pieces. I think they’re working most successfully as photographs of the objects rather than the objects themselves (again, ugh) but I’d like to see if there’s a way to make them intractable as digital works possibly? Something in the likeness of selecting your point of focus in each image but never being able to see the entire image in focus. It’s possible I need to make stands with more distance between the panels to emphasize this in the documentation and really dramatize it in a more overt way.
Again, I’m finding myself interested in removing overall legibility in these 3D pieces from the viewer, offering them the suggestion of a fully composed image but not allowing it to ever come fully into view by teasing the point of focus forward or backward in space, similar to the act of photographing as seen through a viewfinder (giving the viewer my experience photographing vs the photograph’s capturing). In thinking of Barthes, I’m offering the viewer a closeness to the actual experience of photographing by altering how to “see” vs “look”, further dissecting the moment the photograph existed in into planes of existence and then memorializing them in panels akin to tombstones (etching into plexi rather than stone of course).
7•29•24
New image/stands
Made a new panel image and a set of panel stands to help keep things uniform when looking at them. Brought them into the studio and made a couple shots to give them a bit more presence. Strangely I’m kind of liking them as ‘rephotographs’ now and am considering exploring that process of taking the image, turning them 3D, then photographing them again to see how they become further distorted or information becomes less legible.
7•22•24
5 panel Plexi rendering of “Mirror closet” polaroid, 4”x4”x1”
I planned on trying to render an image in a grouping of plexi-panels, so I chose an image from my archive and began breaking it down by plains of field. I inverted it and rendered them as bitmaps, then brought each over to the lasercutter and began etching and cutting. I wanted to try and bring a bit more dimensionality to the photo, give it more physical presence, but I’m not sure if this is as successful as I’d have hoped. I wasn’t as neat with my object tracing as I could have been, but what I was happy with was the mirror panel being etched on the coke bottle green plexi, which I think helped it feel a little more nuanced and intentional. This was just an experiment to see how it could be done, and I’m not altogether dissatisfied with how it came out, but it definitely has room to be pushed.
7•16•24
Torsos (12”x18”), Diver (12”x18”), and Ink Panel (18”x24”)
Experimenting with collagraphs. Referencing images from polaroids and free-drawing on panels.
