PRINTS AND LANGUAGE

PRINTS AND LANGUAGE: Selected Projects

De-natured (2009)
While each of these minimal scenes caught my eye I was also interested in creating a kind of odd reverberation within each image, and to create a kind of syntax building from one image to the next. Grouped in sets of 9 the small vignettes create an odd natural history archive.

Backyard (2009)
The two images in this long print (13 x 45") were taken from the net, one from google street view. A fragmented family story runs along this backdrop.

Like Fire (2008)
One night while sitting at my computer and looking at this image in photoshop and watching the news on the nearby family TV — much of southern California was on fire — I absentmindedly wondered if I could turn my attractive window view into one of flames and danger.
As I shifted the tonalities towards reds, yellows and blacks, the image seemed to become infused with other interpretative possibilities, i.e., not a mere window view, but a photo-based image which had the color of fire or possibly blood. What does it take to have an image seem to be about something? Can a photographic image present the possibility of reality, abstraction and metaphor? How is that possible — what meanings do we as viewers overlay onto images? What is like fire?

Still Lifes (2006)
Fabricated scenes from wallpaper motifs. I've had an ongoing interest in the role of “mass produced aesthetic objects and design” and how these items reflect the eras in which they were produced. I have been intrigued by the odd flora and fauna inventions and period abstract patterns of wallpapers dating especially from the 1940’s to 1970’s, as well as the gender-based designs for boys’ and girls’ bedrooms. (In a compromise struck with my parents when I was 6 years old, I accepted their choice of butterfly wallpaper only if the overall color was blue and not pink). The concept of what background design is right for a particular room and function has led to some playful digital experimentation where I bring background to foreground.

Recipes for Disaster (2006)
A play on domesticity gone bad. Found recipes written in shorthand, backdrop of corny wallpaper, portraits of the president and cabinet members responsible for the escalation of the war in Iraq.

American Dream Blown Up (2004)
Very enlarged wallpaper motifs (changed from one inch images to 45" images) of idyllic home representations. A wordless commentary on the housing price bubble soon to explode.

Zone of Fog (2004)
Sequence of 10 minimal images (11x14") with fabricated clouds. An unsettling road experience with incursions into memory and passage of time.

Wallpaper Scrolls (2003)
Montaged 1940's wallpaper and fabric motifs (18x60") meant to "read" as scrolls.

Mocking Wallpaper (2002)
Triptych with red, white and blue panels (50 x 24" ea). Antiwar wallpaper with the lyrics of "Mockingbird Hill" a 1951 hit sung by Patti Page about an idyllic landscape. Illustration collaboration with Mary Peterson. The theme of this piece never seems to lose it's relevancy unfortunately.

P atterned After (1998)
Montaged 1940's wallpaper and fabric motifs.. Drawing interventions applied to wallpaper as repeating motifs.

Wallpaper Sample Book (1999)
Wallpaper samples go through various permutations in this series assembled in book form. Motifs spar and go missing.

Map Index (1995)
Collaboration with Los Angeles fiction writer Kate Haake. Haake's fiction populates a topo map as well as this map's index.

Biographies - triptychs (1993)
I convinced various friends and students (and my mother) to pose for portraits at the local Sears photo studio. Two "opposing" stories are intertwined (every other line using 2 different fonts) in the middle panel flanked by 2 portraits. It is not clear which story belongs to which portrait. The stories meld together.

Billboard (sponsored by LACE - 1992)
Satire of the ubiquitous travel billboards around L.A. Made in response to the Rodney King Uprising. The billboard travelled to 3 locations.

Motivation Series (1991)
Using found wallpaper as a backdrop and portraits of men from a 1950 bank annual report, the portraits are paired with my tongue-in-cheek text concerning each man's success in business. This series was printed with one of the first ink jet printers capable of printing larger format prints, the quality was very rough, high in contrast with very saturated tones.

War Comics (1985), 20 x 24" black and white silver prints each panel
I re-photographed images from 1940's Life magazines for this series. (pre digital) and via collage created layouts influenced by double-page comic book spreads and magazine layouts. I rephotographed the layouts to make these large format b/w prints. Rotating images and cropping them created false "cinematic" movement in these pieces where themes of surrender, exploitation, fear and heroism are presented.

Survey of False Sites (1981-2)
During my frequent commutes from L.A. to Cal Arts I amused myself by thinking that the not too scenic views along highway 5 resembled archeological ruins. In a sense they were. My undergraduate degree in anthropology seems to have fed this observation. In this series I photographed "false sites"around Los Angeles, borrowed diagrams from textbooks and described the history, mythology and customs of these "lost" cultures peppered with wry observations. I remember this work was a nightmare to produce in the darkroom.