2017
16 x 20in color digital prints
Exhibited at AMP: Art Market Provincetown (Provincetown MA) June 9 - 21, 2017 and Shortcut Gallery (Phoenix AZ) October 2017
For many years my work has addressed the theme of what a home is. Is home is a place of comfort or is comfort something I make and carry with me? Are memories necessarily attached to where they are made? Where am I and my memories kept safe? What do I keep throughout my life? For this project I’ve decided to tackle these questions more biographically than I have before. I plan to recreate my childhood homes.
I grew up in a family who frequently moved. My childhood was scattered across different cities in various states from Atlantic to Pacific. Living so transiently, I was always the new kid, a stranger, or just strange. I was the strange and shy kid condemned and content to play alone. But like many an awkward child I had two gifts: a well developed imagination and the talent to create with what limited resources I had near me. I made castles from cereal boxes in my room. I flew toilet paper tube spaceships through the woods. Those memories of my childhood are vivid; but they often beg question like "what town was that bedroom in? What state was that forest in?".
This vagueness of memory is now the limited resources I will work with. I do not have many photographs of the places I lived. I have found some material on the internet. I have some information gathered from my siblings. Mostly I will have to sort through and work from my own memories of each house, apartment, room or street. I will recreate my childhood homes in a cereal box castle style, as I would have when I was a kid, using discarded household materials and packaging. The final product will be photographs of these architectural models.