As a kid I was an avid photographer in the days of the film camera. I also studied and loved music and that became my choice for a major in college. Naturally I had my musical preferences and relentlessly wanted to understand why. I'm a fan of jazz and wanted to understand its underpinnings. I could hear the difference in color and style between Sonny Rollins and Ben Webster playing tenor sax. I wanted to understand what created that difference. And so on. I am forever grateful for the amazing music education I received that helped me with these questions, and especially for my brilliant professors Robert Cogan and Pozzi Escot. The theoretical paradigms of my education became the bedrock from which I navigate music, art and the world.
Visual art is material. Music is audible, not visible. Trying to understand music via notation or sonogram is insufficient. Wrestling with this invisible audible world evolved into an interest in exploring more invisible worlds. And so materializing invisible worlds—emotions, the subconscious, dreaming, histories archived within the body—through image making began to fascinate me. I also have to mention my passion for dance. I studied dance for most of my life so when I went back to photography, I wanted to photograph dance. I am especially fascinated by the expressiveness of the human body in dance and movement and the subconscious conditions and stories that movement reveals. Similar to the sculpture of artists such as Camille Claudel and Auguste Rodin, photography has the ability to capture the expressive moments in movement.
Today my work starts with a photograph taken with either my Nikon DSLR or Hasselblad film camera. I experiment in the darkroom and with digital tools. I integrate photography with animation, printmaking, chemical pours and sound. For me the process must be tactile, sensory and gestural as a counterweight to the required technical and digital skills as I look for balance between the physical and cerebral aspects of making art. Image: Self-Portrait
Bio and Resume