Artist Statement
In my series Wake Up I explore ideas about what a home can be.
How does the institution of the home, a place for learning and growth, foster attitudes towards tolerance and empathy? Alternately, can the home be the source where the seeds of bias and prejudice take root? Do these things lay dormant, sleeping, until activated by some outside force?
The homes and communities in these works are a metaphor; a construct that possesses the ability to shape people’s minds and understanding about the world.
These constructs are under scrutiny. Their walls – flimsy.
I work with cyanotype, a historical photographic practice once used widely for documentation of worldly specimens and architectural blueprint drawings. This notion of the blueprint, or plan, was adopted as part of my process when creating the templates for these constructed houses.
Each house suggests a type of suburban dwelling from a variety of regions. The community aerial prints are derived from satellite views of the neighborhood I grew up in. I create the sculptural houses, make photographs of the forms, and through the cyanotype process, coax out an image that lurks somewhere in between the familiar and the obscure.
