Find yourself naked in the forest, shed of your clothing and character as you walk among, search within, and penetrate through your environment. Allow the leaves to part for you, following the path that presents safety, making sure to keep yourself from guessing what it is you’re looking for. You feel that you are being watched, the same way your internal world is surveilled by the eyes of those who lie repressed in the unconscious, and the overpowering authority of the ones who judge. Do not be discouraged by the realization of your company, do not try to force them away, only accept their gaze and carry on with your search. As you fall deeper into your journey and forget yourself, the more the unconscious desires of your mind will rise; “Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where you came from, and where you will go.” (Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, pg. 4). As you reach the climax of your journey, as you experience the violent and sudden disassociation of death, you are launched upwards, brushing against the sun, and visiting the sphere of the sacred. Here, color is lost, as is texture and familiarity. The divine is the unknown, like an ambiguous form that has no desire or need to define itself. The impossibilities of your physical, profane form are illuminated as you stare back at yourself and experience a doubled body. The divine can be brought into the profane world through the medium of the superstar, an icon with the privilege of access to glamour, excess, and luxury. Though often a person, an object can also have the same qualities of sublime beauty. There are many examples of this, but what is most interesting about an object with this magnetic quality is the variation of criteria between different people. Some prefer gold over diamonds, some find transcendence in an object only if it is an heirloom (it is the history within it that connects them to the sacred), and a few gifted minds wander alleys in search of something discarded. Welcome to the Orange Velvet Dream House.
"into the shade, to rest, to dream—" explores the sounds generated by a series of still images through the use of optical sound. A still image is a portrayal of light being captured in a static moment, something that can not be represented using sound. Sound can be stagnant, but it will always be identical waveforms repeated continuously. Utilizing super 16mm film, "into the shade, to rest, to dream—" explores what would happen if a sound 16mm projector read an image as a waveform and allows the viewer to hear the sound of a still moment in time.
"Men of Men" explores the hyper-overwhelming masculinity portrayed in a gay porn magazine from the 1990s. This magazine, with different models in different locations, creates new individuals that can embody the idea of a man while performing a queered reality. The reality constructed by this magazine and others like it is clouded by the glorification of a body that is muscular, groomed, cis-gender, and white.
Circles of colored light dancing and touching, allowed to live and move as free organisms. Still images of colored plastic taken between moments of my fingers interacting with them have created the illusion of movement. The meditative and synthesized sound mimics the transient motion of the shapes and the intricate process of animation.
This found footage film pulls images and sounds from a variety of old films, showcasing scenes of joy and beauty among the grotesque, disturbing aspects of life. This piece exhibits the idea that the nature of things isn’t always ideal.
"of Sun" is documentation of minuscule and monumental happenings within the landscape of the Canadian Rockies, Alaskan glaciers, and the foliage of California and the American midwest. These images, collected in the summer of 2019, are the result of sunlight as it made contact with the emulsion of the film and left behind images made of sun.