This is an image…

There are always defining tragedies in our lives, this piece was the 5th attempt I had made to resolve mine. Being an image maker I am well versed in the weight of an image, its metaphysical power so-to-speak. I had taken the last photo ever of a life, and I held this life, weight in my hands - the responsibility. It is always hard in this work what to disclose and what to hold tight, but this piece is about the first life I have ever took, an accident, but still an animal in my care. In the last moments as I held their head on my lap I had wished I could film this “pure” emotion. The thought left me as quickly as it came, but in the days after I could not forget it, that all my training as an artist had interrupted my emotional state with one filled with a disassociation that shook me to my core. Is that what the theory is all about? Does it remove us from actually living? Within this piece I relive my mental image I see every time I look in the rear view mirror but also the complexity of art and theory, and my own personal frustration with what is developed after of all this training.

Video, sound, and print installation. Fall 2018