2018 Photography

Strokes of Light was a project based around the prompt of "drawing with new media," or in other words, discovering new ways to draw.

I had the goal in mind from the start to find a way to draw with something that isn't tangible to the human hand. After experimenting with different ideas of hands-off drawing, like using gravity or vibrations, I decided that the appropriate challenge for this project would be to find a way to have full control over the drawing process itself, but with a medium I could not fully interact with. This led me to working with light.

I began to take the idea of drawing with light literally, as I began investigating how I could capture motion using a camera. With a stationary camera set to a low slow shutter speed, I began to learn how to manipulate light in such a way that I could use it to create images in a predictable way.

A special thanks to my friend, Austin, for volunteering to help with this, as I observed his "playing" with the lights and how that translated to final pictures, then used those observations to create my own images (the video has a mixture of both of our results).

2016 Photography

Our Light was a project based around the quality of light and "finding identity," which is a common theme amongst my work.

Identity has always been a concept that I personally have struggled with but has been the subject of my own fascination. A lot of time I spent growing as an artist was dedicated to interpreting and expressing other people's ideas of "identity" and incorporating them into my own views.

For this project, I collected some very amazing and varied individuals, then asked them to "create a narrative" only using the props that I brought to the shoot. I decided to take these photos outdoors and in the dark of night, as I felt there was an atmosphere of anonymity in that sort of environment, especially with only one real light source. Without any further prompting, the volunteers acted out scenes without scripts, motives, or resolutions, as I passively observed and took photos. I found it amazing the ways in which they interacted with one another, taking turns to stage shots or fulfill each other's ideas.

In the end, I selected the photos that best conveyed the curiosity, playfulness, seriousness, and looseness of the time spent during the photoshoot. I named the images after tarot cards, which is something that appears in a few more of my works. Accompanying the images is a poem written about the ideas of identity.

2016 Photography

Identity 1 - Digital Graffiti is a short collection of photographs from a brief trip I took to Arizona. The prompt for this series was "finding identity in what you see." This was an early exploration of some of my own ideas regarding identity, so I sought to photograph the spaces, places, or objects that naturally caught my gaze as I explored an area that I had no prior experience with. Each photograph was then digitally altered to include a symbol representative of what I felt at the time of taking the photo.

This project served to help me better understand how I personally look at things, the kinds of thoughts I have initially, or even just the trend in things that catch my attention.