“For Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are still just able to endure…” -- Rainer Maria Rilke, The First Elegy
"What have we done to our images?" --Werner Herzog
Artist Statement
In my current work, I apply material play and attention to craft to political subject matter through the alteration of the NY Times Newspaper. Kenosis, an ancient Greek noun for emptiness, is a project where I erase and excise text and image, leaving a delicate skin of lace behind. This laborious, repetitive process allows me to be slow and intimate with an event that would otherwise whiz by me as a sensational image or sound bite. I am inspired by historical narrative traditions such as illuminated manuscripts and stained glass as well as the objective reductions of Minimalism.
Using my newspaper-cuts as stencils for screen-prints, I print the margins of journalism over luxury items and images of war. Often flocked with glitter, I envision this emptied grid as an alchemical frame of possibility. Fascinated by the shift from oral cultural communication to text, I also turn excised articles into musical scores to be performed and passed on as chant. By purging printed media of its everyday functionality, I’m invoking an underlying essence that can be preserved through the vibration of melody. Each facet of this multimedia project provides an opportunity to loosen my own fixed ways of seeing the world and shift my sense of alienation and impotence in relation to current events to a new type of creative and poetic agency.
"What have we done to our images?" --Werner Herzog
Artist Statement
In my current work, I apply material play and attention to craft to political subject matter through the alteration of the NY Times Newspaper. Kenosis, an ancient Greek noun for emptiness, is a project where I erase and excise text and image, leaving a delicate skin of lace behind. This laborious, repetitive process allows me to be slow and intimate with an event that would otherwise whiz by me as a sensational image or sound bite. I am inspired by historical narrative traditions such as illuminated manuscripts and stained glass as well as the objective reductions of Minimalism.
Using my newspaper-cuts as stencils for screen-prints, I print the margins of journalism over luxury items and images of war. Often flocked with glitter, I envision this emptied grid as an alchemical frame of possibility. Fascinated by the shift from oral cultural communication to text, I also turn excised articles into musical scores to be performed and passed on as chant. By purging printed media of its everyday functionality, I’m invoking an underlying essence that can be preserved through the vibration of melody. Each facet of this multimedia project provides an opportunity to loosen my own fixed ways of seeing the world and shift my sense of alienation and impotence in relation to current events to a new type of creative and poetic agency.
