The Builder
201727.5" x 40"Archival pigment print
A young girl is in the process of completing a ten-foot high house of cards. Clues indicate that she has tried before with less successful results.
Constructing the tower took slightly over one year. It is meticulously held together by hot glue and patience. Once I determined how many cards would be needed for one layer, my brother Doug developed an algorithm to calculate the total amount needed (7.5 x N^2 + 0.5N). Bicycle Playing Cards agreed to sponsor the project in-kind and provided me with the necessary 14,976 cards.
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.
I’ve been asked why I go to such lengths - that is, why not simply photoshop an image together? Why travel to the woods to build a bedroom, or build a full split-level set? My reason hinges on how integral the building process becomes. Because these sets are so elaborate, the idea is concretely conceived before any construction begins. But through the building process elements evolve in ways I’d never have planned. Accidental details take on a meaning of their own; new connections between objects can’t help but emerge when standing in an open bedroom in a darkening spring forest.