Series 1 and Series 2, like their names suggest, were my first two series’ of work outside of photography. Both series honor the cultural icons and images that I have been drawn to my whole life. The guitar, bicycle, rocket, and piano (to name a few) are examples of familiar cultural icons.
There is always a psychological aspect to all that we’re drawn to create. The beauty, power, familiarity and simplicity of these aforementioned symbols have called to artists for generations and still do. I can think of no better way to begin my new direction than to start with the same icons.
In creating my icon collages, I use images of signs, posters, and graffiti found in the numerous photographs I have taken. I experiment with many combinations, sometimes rejecting an entire image or using it as part of another collage. As few as three or as many as ten photographs might be used to compose one image, or small pieces of one photograph might be used multiple times. It is through this process that I marry my love of photography with other art forms, transforming photographic images into something complex, richly textured, and painterly.
