Artist Statement: Bilaterography

This series is a departure from my usual approach to photography. It's fairly documentary, in that it is chronicling a sort of involuntary tic of mine. When left to my own devices I start counting symmetrical objects. Maybe you do it too? I am obsessed with games and this show presents my favorite alone-time game.

(My second favorite game is to imagine how I would escape from whatever room I'm in if the space was suddenly filled with water. Aside from the strategy element (gotta be efficient and find the path of least resistance) it's also fun because it lets you think of any given space in terms of its volume, and the shapes its negative spaces create. Symmetry is much easier to photograph.)

Nature is already symmetrical, and buildings are intentionally constructed with a mirror harmony, so it's often a very easy game. However one part of it I particularly love is rough symmetry - when there is an underlying structure but it's imperfect. "Garage Doors" is a good example of a casually imperfect symmetry - the geometry of the structure is perfectly symmetrical, but at some point the owners switched out one of the doors and they've aged differently so this symmetry is broken.

"Green House Gray House" is another fun game. Both houses are structurally identical, but each chose different features - the eaves, the type of white screen door, the style of window framing. It's an exercise in counting - an image you can look at and systematically digest, then leave feeling a real sense of accomplishment.

"Kyra and Lynzi" are my second cousins. This photo was taken last year in my aunt's neighborhood in Florida. The girls are 13 and 14, and tend to dress alike (same brand of shorts) but not quite exactly (different colors). I was struck by the way the trees are compositionally trying to match, but one is bare and the other lush.

In "Lamps," many of the objects were photographed as-is, but I had fun exaggerating the symmetry by using things lying around to really beat you over the head with it. The photo is make very casually, with a loose, messy composition, to suggest an accidental situation.

So you can think of this as a game if you like - spot the similarities. Let it carry out beyond the show. Get obsessive if you want. How are people standing in the gallery? Any similar postures? Any pairs? How about the lighting? What if you pictured the space from above? How would things balance out that way? What about the cars parked outside? The shoes in your closet? The freckles on your face? And on and on.

Artist Statement: Hello

Ahh, breasts. Bouncy, brazen balls of comedy, each and every one. As a lady, no matter what you are doing, you have them. On the toilet? You've got breasts. Buying cereal? There they are, along for the ride. Trip and fall on your ass? The twins will see your fall, and raise you a couple aftershocks of their own. Hello, they say! You can ignore me, but someone, somewhere, is aware of this part of you. Hello! Well, hello right back, you bizarre body parts. Hello to you too.

Artist Statement: Hanging (front and back)

These photographs are about the comical awkwardness of having a body. Simply put, our bodies are physically heavy, accidentally sexual objects - we have a gender, our bodies are sexual, there's no escaping this; regardless of what we are doing we are doing it in a sexualized physical form. We can intellectualize ourselves, distancing our thoughts from our bodies, but the minute your foot gets itchy that disconnect is gone. As a woman, I am especially aware of my sexuality because people I don't know point it out as they drive by in cars. It is strange; I am trapped in this specific body and related to in this specific body; I am hanging awkwardly here; it's a blunt and hilarious thing, to be flesh.

Artist Statement: Visual Weight

The Visual Weight  series stems from my experience as a security guard at the Frye Art Museum. I spent hours each day silently walking through the galleries, growing familiar with each new show, and in a broader sense, with the ways any show interacts with the gallery space.

There is a specific procedure involved in installation and deinstallation of exhibits. When a show is finished, its gallery is blocked off from the general public. First the art is removed, then the walls are patched and painted, then the new show installed; and only then is the lighting changed. Because of this there is a long period of time where certain galleries consist of nothing but blank walls, still lit for specifically sized artworks, now absent. As I would pass through these rooms I still found myself relating to these light-artifacts as having a concrete presence, a visual weight independent of the missing work, retained by the preserved layout. The art was initially hung with a certain composition dependant not just on content, but on size and shape and quantity; through the leftover lighting, I was presented with a new exhibit, cut off from the rest of the museum, from the general public, cut off from even artistic intention.

Each photograph in this series is titled after the removed work.

Artist Statement: Constructed Narrative

My constructed-narrative photographs are nonlinear short stories. They focus on bizarrely adventurous young girls populating beautiful but uneasy worlds. To create these images, I draw from childhood fantasies and memories, then construct life-sized environments. By pushing these scenarios to an extreme conclusion, the girls become metaphors for our hyper-real childhood selves, where remembered emotions become stronger through time.