“Why is it that you do what you do?”
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This piece is both a professional statement and a game. I encourage you to experience it above, but I have also included the full text below for accessibility and reference.
I feel an expectation here to express a passion for making art, which of course begins at an early age, and finish with the following crescendo: Here and now I have fully embraced my role as ‘the artist.’ However, I can’t say I really feel that way. I love learning and experimenting with new things – be that a new technique, a new technology, or a new idea – and I love sharing that joy and sense of newness with others. Calling myself an artist simply means I am questioned less often in that pursuit. I fear there isn’t another name I can use which gives me permission to exist with so few stipulations.
In life I take on a scientific method of sorts to make sense of the world around me. This process usually starts with confusion and ends in connection. Everything is an experiment; writing a script for the Taco Bell drive through, opening doors, following your eyes traveling across my photographs, making phone calls, finding the best rollerblading route to work (and forgetting my shoes at home), studying context clues, talking to strangers, and so on. Everything I’ve learned about the world and its inhabitants has come from a confusion-fueled curiosity.
When I was a child, I disassembled a CRT television in my backyard. I uncovered the cowl of the TV to reveal the mess of wires and important-looking-stuff. I was fascinated to realize there was something inside the things surrounding me. That these things had an inner-design at play – if only I could uncover their cowl to study them. My mom was enchanted that when I was done, I successfully put it back together, carefully replacing each screw with my screwdriver.
In grade school I wanted to be a scientist (a geologist, to be precise). Later, in high school, I discovered photography and wanted to be a photojournalist; I loved how it helped me connect with the people around me. In college I was introduced to art. I liked how making art and being with artists helped me find my feelings.
Photography especially captivated me. Cameras (and their images) have clearly defined mechanisms for how they reconstruct the world. However, their interpretations are broadly malleable. This framework helped me understand the things around me and the things within me. Photography also introduced me to darkrooms and labs filled with other folks brimming with that same excitement. This fulfilled both my desires from the arts; engagement with precise yet open-ended systems, and a community with whom to share the journey.
I also owe a great deal to my mentors over the years. My high school journalism teacher told me he didn’t like me when he first met me. Later, my undergrad photography professors told me I couldn’t be the way I was if I wanted to be a lab monitor. They, among others, were able to reach me in ways I had not previously imagined. They were right – I have been rude and harmful and thoughtless many times in my life. Their mirrors helped me see parts of myself which were invisible in my own. Their support, in turn, taught me how to support those whom I cared for but did not know how to show it. Being in community with other folks has taught me there is always more to learn.
This learning is rarely straightforward however. Given how much we tend to disagree on the fundamentals of life, the totally obvious parts are clearly not-totally-obvious. These parts require the most examination and ground work. And by laying a foundation to my own specifications, I have found solace and many friends. Through comparing notes, we have arrived at hard-earned validation for each other. However, here is also where I have found the most dissonance. Sometimes the correct way to live my life is totally obvious, but only to someone else. And often they are totally mistaken.
At the end of the day I just want to spend time with other people. I want to share thoughts spoken late into the night – when it’s so dark that only our voices carve out the shape of the moment. I want to laugh and to cry and to care tremendously around a campfire with dear friends and new acquaintances. Art is not the only path to these things, but it is the one I know. In this, art becomes a framework of thought and caregiving rather than strictly a mode of producing objects. It becomes a way to look carefully at the world around me. The output of objects, when it occurs, is moreso a means to an end.
If you have ever flown in an airplane, I’m sure you’ve been reminded that: In the case of cabin depressurization, you must put your own mask on before assisting others. It’s great advice – if you’ve ever wondered why, google Cerebral hypoxia – But it is important to remember the latter half is not a suggestion. That being the part about helping others put their masks on as well.
The inextricable link between mind and body makes it clear that we must care for each other all the time and in many ways – not only when we are physically in danger. This is one lesson which ‘being an artist’ has taught me. I have learned this lesson through being online, through being a photographer, and through creatively solving problems within my practice. None of these things happen in isolation however, and the production of my work is always simultaneous to being with others – in all the virtual and physical forms it takes.
In closing, I am certain art will continue to help me make sense of the disorienting world around me. Yet, the conventions of how I make my art and what materials I use are prone to rapid change and slow transformation. I value this opportunity for reinvention much more than a clear and consistent path. I reserve the right to be wrong, and the responsibility to learn from my mistakes. I have tried other strategies, but I always end up back here.
And so, despite my best efforts, I am still an artist.