I am interested in the idea or act of recontextualizing American history in an attempt to explain the present.  My approach to this involves the combination and most often, confusion and degradation of images of beloved American presidents and other American icons in order to speak of the admittedly, senseless act of seeking scapegoats for our current political crisis.  These images are combined with others that are intended to more abstractly represent the present like the rabbits, buildings, and to some extent the landscape images in Finding America.

In addition to the people they represent the presidential portraits are meant to reference the understandings, attitudes, and fears that would have been current during their respective periods in time, while the rabbit and building images are meant to stand in for the present as a consequence of the past. 

In some of the earlier work I was using the rabbit to represent the present because I was thinking about the idea of developing a modern day spirit animal, an animal that would be the contemporary version of Coyote in Native American culture.  I chose the rabbit because it’s an animal that is for the most part considered wild, but like rats and mice, has adapted itself seamlessly and symbiotically with American domestic suburban life.  Rabbits are also commonly known for having a high reproductive rate, which for my purposes speaks of instinctual innocence and unforeseen consequences.

Finding America was the piece that initiated my interest in exploring American history and identity related themes.  This piece began with a month and a half long Keroac inspired road trip where I traveled from Georgia to California and back.  In this piece I wanted to explore the romanticism behind being a tourist and traveling west, America’s westward expansion during the gold rush days, and finally western expansion as a unifying theme in all of American (and before that, European) history.

My newest work uses skyscrapers, which take themselves out of the norm because they are pointed at one another rather than existing on a normal horizon.  These images are in response to the media’s continual use of the phrase, “buildings as weapons” when referring to the lengths our opponents have resorted to in the ‘war on terror.’  I chose this type of imagery, because I wanted to put a more contemporary spin on the work and use images that would more likely resonate with the viewer.

In the background of the building pieces I am using imagery from the past, more specifically photographs of former presidents and other political ‘heroes’ (or villains) from American history.  By including these I mean to first, call into question the idolization of the figures themselves and second, attempt to associate or incriminate them some how with the present day.