IMAGE GUIDE
My most recent series, Mastication, features the physical detritus that results from oral fixation. These objects, mangled, convoluted and grotesque as they are, represent the myriad issues we mull over, conquer and discard in the course of our daily dealings. By imaging these micro-sculptures several times life-size, in candy-colored tones, I invite the viewer to consider their comfort level with their own habitual idiosyncrasies, enlarged and documented for public consumption.

In 2005 I produced a series, Virtue in My Veins, based on my father's emergency surgery. During the long hours spent in the hospital waiting room, I documented the ordeal using a digital camera phone. I abstracted these photographs and superimposed them upon images of my father at more vital times. I sized the images to standard chest x-ray dimensions, then printed them on Duratrans and mounted them on light boxes. The finished pieces are deliberately bright and fragmented in order to evoke the interlocking grid of luck and disaster that overlays our fragile personal narratives.

During 2002-2004, I photographed Davey von Bohlen, lead singer of the genre-defining band The Promise Ring. Using his lyrics as a starting point, I used medium format transparency film to capture Davey's life at home and on the road. Carrying a large, heavy studio camera to shoot candid images slowed my process and allowed me to explore the details of the increasingly personal path he walked as a nearly retired rock star at 30.

In 2001, I began to volunteer with an adult literacy group in New Orleans. Upon first joining the group, I had trouble identifying who were teachers and who were students. When photographing those involved, I created straightforward portraits that lent dignity to each subject regardless of academic status, thereby removing benchmarks identifying the levels of struggle or success that brought each to the program.

In 2000, I secured a $25,000 grant and used it to travel across the country, volunteering at elder care facilities and completing portraits of residents. The final installation includes large-scale images wired with individual speakers and suspended from the ceiling to allow for subtle movement. After processing the portraits using a combination of letterpress and encaustic techniques, I mounted them to hand-stretched canvas and used beeswax to skin the work as a whole. This presentation allows the viewer to interact with unpredictably vocal, tactile subjects, and invites the viewer to reconsider our cultural aversion to interaction with aging bodies.

 

EXHIBITIONS AND AWARDS

2006
All-Staff Arts & Media Award WInner
Columbia College Chicago

2005
Breathe: Curated by Dave Gent
Around the Coyote Gallery, Chicago, IL

2003
Through Voyager's Eyes, Semester at Sea's national juried exhibition
[seven-degrees] gallery, Laguna Beach, CA

2002
Through Voyager's Eyes, Semester at Sea's national juried exhibition
National Press Club, Washington, D.C.

PaperWings: Images of Adult Literacy in New Orleans, solo exhibition
Sojourner Truth Community Center

2001
Named one of the New Orleans Gambit Weekly's Top 40 under 40

To Keep Strong Hearts and Strong Hands, solo exhibition
Carroll Gallery, New Orleans, October

2000
Josephine Louise Newcomb
Photography Fellowship, $25,000

Rusty Collier Memorial Award for Excellence in Studio Art
(awarded by faculty to one graduating senior)

Newcomb Art Department Undergraduate Juried Exhibition
Selected Artist

Above the Law: Innovations in Art
Tulane University BA Undergraduate Exhibition 2000