I spent the past 10 months thinking about my new series. I created other images in that time, but this new series felt too important to bang out quickly. I knew, from the moment it felt crucial to create something relevant to my life, that it was going to be more important than anything else I had created before. In March 2017 I decided that I must create this new series. In May, I had my first breakthrough as to the specific subject matter of the series. And, for the months following, I felt that I didn’t have a single other good idea.

I had the usual panicked feelings about time (Am I wasting it? Shouldn’t I be more productive?) and about artistry (Am I a good enough artist? Does that matter?). As time pressed on, more and more people asked me where that series was that I teased. They asked what it would look like, what point I was aiming to make, where I would shoot, who would be in it, and the list goes on.

I didn’t have a single answer to a single question. 

By September I started getting worried that this series wasn’t meant to be. I started to think deeply about TIMING, and waiting for the right moment to tell the right story. Was this my time? Or was I rushing something for the sake of productivity?

By November I started to calm down. I came to terms with, perhaps, this not being the right series in this moment. I started to let go of it, just a little. I loosened my grip on the need, the anxious compulsion, to create.

And then everything changed.

It wasn’t until one week ago,
after ten months of trying to visualize and conceptualize this series,
that it finally made sense.

I went on a long hike with my Love, as we do several times a week just to brainstorm, and it felt so clear. I had been so caught up in precise details that I failed to look at the big picture. And then there it was.

Ten months ago I had an idea. I’ve had so many ideas I’ve lost count. Those ideas got turned into pictures, films, sketches, poems, short stories, books. My ideas have been done and redone and cried over and laughed at and loved. Why was this one different? Why did this one take ten months to scrap together? 

And this, my friends, is my greatest lesson in creating this series…which I have not yet even picked up my camera to shoot:

Not every idea is ripe for the
moment you want to create it. 

I feel, strongly, that my waiting to make this series was to make room for new experience, for distance, for growth.

I am a young artist in many respects, without tallied life experiences and heartache, without the type of inspiration that hurts to create from. This year I found a piece of that tortured inspiration, and it took longer than I realized it would to digest. More importantly, I realized the need for distance from our inspiration. I realized the need for deep thinking in art. And I realized how few people do that, myself included.

I grew up in this must-have-it-now culture. I grew up with internet in my house since I was 10 years old. My first screen name was based on the Pound Puppies, because I was a child, and therefore I learned that what I want now, I can have now – a lesson that buoyed me to a fast-paced career and self-centric decision. But, also, a mentality that gave me the undue urgency to create fast, to share fast, and to repeat.

Slow progress in creating art allow for concepts to emerge that might have been overlooked. It allows for more daring and evocative imagery to take shape and hold, without fear or shyness there to stop it. It allows for my own feelings to see them from a distance. And most importantly, it allowed me to grow with my ideas, not just to move ahead of them.

When I return from a two week trip to India and Sri Lanka in February, I will begin creating immediately. Locations are being booked, props being made, models contacted, and I’m ready. I feel certain I am ready.

1. What idea are you brainstorming right now?
2. What is holding you back from creating?

At the end of 2015 I conceived of a new photo series and I spent all of 2016 creating what ended up being 9 images in that series titled “Fourth Wall”. I loved [almost] every moment of creating that series and it felt amazing to finally have it produced and hanging on walls. I stopped myself from thinking too deeply about my next project until Fourth Wall was finished because I have a tendency to bounce around between many ideas and never fully dedicate myself to one of them.

When my show hung in January this year I let myself breathe and explore my imagination again. I thought, after so long focused on one project, a new idea would come to me immediately. The funny thing about creativity, though, is that sometimes the longer you practice it, the longer it takes for ideas to come. Let me clarify – the longer it takes for GOOD ideas to come, and even longer for GREAT ideas to come. (And THE BEST ideas may never come, or we may not realize they have come until after they are born and grown and out of our hands).

I decided not to rush my newest series. I decided I would not force myself into an idea. I had a sense that something big was brewing based on events in my life this past year and where I find myself in my own private thoughts. I knew something would emerge. Each time I thought I saw it’s little head peaking, it turned out to be a false alarm. Every idea I had was stale or a version of something I had done before. Everything felt contrived or boring or not good enough.

I think part of artistic maturity is knowing when you are NOT ready to create yet. I used to throw myself into ideas and I had a lot of fun with it, but now it isn’t as satisfying that I can find an idea with almost no effort. That is not bragging in any sense, and in fact it is the opposite – an admission, that I too often fall back on ideas that are recycled and simple. The ideas are not hard to find; the good ones and great ones and best ones hide deep and deeper and deepest.

I was talking to my friend Amy about some things that had been on my mind when I was traveling in Thailand in May – I didn’t say anything particularly spectacular, but I think that letting out some of my recent story triggered something in my mind. A few hours later I listened to a song off the album “I Can Spin a Rainbow”, Amanda Palmer and Edward Ka-Spell’s newest collaborative record, and I felt the words in me. The music felt true to my life right now.

A few minutes later, reflecting on that music and on my recent thoughts I had spilled to Amy, I had an all-consuming vision. It was perfect. It scared me. I immediately got butterflies in my stomach. I was nervous and anxious and I had trouble breathing. I was excited and elated, even. I had a new idea.

And that idea wasn’t stale and it wasn’t easy and it made me feel sick.

That was how I knew it had to happen.

I started explaining it to Amy, who I knew would or could appreciate it, and in the middle of my sentence I noticed a shift in my mind. The idea went from hypothetical to already happened. I believe in manifesting your desires, or thinking of them as already finished. That happened naturally and without warning as I told her about my idea. I felt that it already happened.

I won’t say what the idea is yet, as it will require some legal hoop jumping and a massive look into the eyes of my fears, but I will say – it is different and dark and deeper than I’ve dared to look.

And that brings me to the question I wanted to ask, and why I am writing this to you.

If you had an idea that you knew
would offend and upset some people,
would you do it anyway?

I am going to create my new series. It will offend people. And I am afraid of that – I won’t act like I don’t become anxious (and sometimes even non-functioning) at criticism. In fact, it is my worst quality and biggest inhibitor on my life. And that is precisely why I feel I need to do it: partially because it is already in me, partially because I feel the need to be honest in my creativity, and partially because the series itself is about directly confronting fear.

I already feel uncomfortable writing this. I never mind if people don’t like my work, truly, as I’ve far outgrown that fear. But I am highly sensitive to personally being a source of unpleasantness for someone.

Logic says that the whole world cannot love us,
Reason says that our best chance at a fulfilling life is an honest one,
My heart says that I am not ready to confront my honesty,
My willpower says that I will do it anyway.

Thank you for following this newest journey. I hope I can push through to make it a reality. All my gratitude.

From Day 1 of starting the Fourth Wall series, I declared: “I am going to flood the room!”. My friends looked at my like I was nuts. After all, I had just signed a contract for a studio on the second floor. My room was being built inside of another room that wouldn’t allow me to easily move it. And there was no way anyone but me was going to risk getting in massive trouble by pumping hundreds of gallons of water into a second story room.

I kept trying to figure out how we would do it. A long vacuum, I said! Lots of buckets! A huge tarp that would catch the water! A portable swimming pool! But nothing seemed realistic enough to not severely damage the old floors we were standing on.

Finally I came to terms with the situation. I had three options: I scrap the picture entirely, I Photoshop water into the room, or I painstakingly disassemble the room and rebuild it outside in a pool. I went with the latter.

When the day came to create the image I asked some friends to come help. Two of them were hours late, but it turned out to be an easier job than I thought. I had stressed for months about the difficulty of the situation, but with a few good friends we were able to have almost the whole job done before the rest of the crew got there! It took one full day to take the room apart, set up the pool and fill it, and rebuild the room inside of the pool. Thankfully I sweet-talked (that’s how I like to see it) the manager of the studios we rented and he let us set up the pool (15 feet in diameter) in the parking lot near my studio. Even so, we loaded the pieces into a truck and drove it closer, since the wood I used was so heavy.

We even strategically build the pool right next to the dumpsters for easy disposal of the room.

The pool took a lot longer to fill than I anticipated. The morning was spent taking the room down and moving it, while the whole day was spent filling the pool from hoses. Lunch came and went and we all took bets on how much longer the water would take. Just when the light got really good outside (toward the end of day with mountains blocking the direct sun), the water finished and I was ready to shoot.

I knew that I wanted very specific looking props in the water. I chose the yellow chair which I had in my studio the whole time. I got it just to sit on and because it looked neat, but I realized it was perfect for the flooded room I was creating. I went to several thrift/antique stores to find this painting, which had the right colors. Everywhere I went I asked for paintings of a ship, and this was the only one that was the right time period and color palette. Finally I brought an old book to submerge.

I went flipping through the book to find the perfect page and there it was. I sunk the book and took some shots, making sure you could read the book page if you looked closely enough. It reads: “Epidemic of Fear”.

Everything was in place. The only trouble was that I didn’t have my normal setup. I put my ladder in the pool just outside the room but there was no ceiling to attach the camera to. Further, this image was going to take longer to shoot to try and get the water moving in the right way with the subject. My friend started out holding the camera, which I attached to my tripod and had her lean over the walls, holding it up as high as she could. It wasn’t an easy task, since it was heavy on the end of the camera (thank goodness I had switched to a mirrorless camera so at least it was lighter!). Eventually she had to take a break and switch off.

Because of this the image was shot closer than the rest, so I expanded the frame outward slightly. There wasn’t a lot of editing that needed to happen in this image to get it to where I wanted it – mostly color enhancement. I remember the first 15 minutes of shooting the shots were all out of focus. I couldn’t get a good measurement on the distance between camera and subject and the person holding the camera kept moving up and down out of exhaustion from holding the camera. Eventually we got it!

This image was very special to me. I have always been afraid of water and have always had problems with fear of any kind. I even have “Fear is the mind killer” tattooed on my arm to remind me to face my fears. It is a quote from Dune by Frank Herbert. I think that fear is a fascinating topic. The fear of being trapped, of feeling out of control, of being in a space that is invaded by something else entirely. These are all natural fears. This is what many of us try to avoid. The book sank to the bottom of the water after about 10 minutes of shooting. I remember feeling that it was a beautiful sign – the book about fear suddenly lost it’s boyancy. It lost the battle with the water.

As Frank Herbert writes in Dune – “Where the fear has gone there will be nothing, only I will remain.”

I hope you enjoy this new series which is on display and represented by the JoAnne Artman Gallery until February 18th. It is showing in New York City (Chelsea).

Very limited editions. Each print is offered at 42×42 inches with an edition of 2, and 8×8 inches with an edition of 3.

You may contact the gallery for purchase requests. Each print has been proofed, signed, and numbered by me, and comes with a certificate of authenticity.

—

Photographed with a Sony a7ii and a 25mm Zeiss lens.

Model: self-portrait

Assistance: Tim Condron, Wakyna Fullington, Kelly McGrady, Matt Force

I created these two images as some of the last in the series. I had gone through my mess-ups and test shoots and everything falling apart with the set and putting it back together. And then, like magic, these two images came together so easily.

When I started the series I had begun collecting dead moths. I would search everywhere – literally – anywhere I went to try and gather them. It was a difficult task that was taking a very long time. Eventually I realized I would not be able to gather enough, and they were each so unique that I didn’t want to shortchange the image by manipulating it later in post. So, I gave up on the image (for now) and I set my sights on another picture.

They may not seem connected, but these two images were what I thought of in place of my grand moth image. The keys satisfied my desire to fill the room with 1,000 moths. Instead I ended up with 4,000 keys. The branches were my ode to nature which was missing from the series thus far and I felt was needed to satiate my natural tendency toward the great outdoors.

The keys were an interesting dilemma. I knew that, over time, I could procure enough keys to make the image happen. What I did not have, however, was the budget for it. At anywhere from $2-5 per key I found, and calculating enough keys to cover the space I was filling, my estimated cost for production would have been about $8,000+ (on the less expensive side!). It wasn’t an option for me. I was already breaking the bank creating this series that I didn’t know if anyone would even care about. I knew I did, but it isn’t always easy to justify an expense if it appears frivolous and self-serving.

I used five keys instead of 4,000. I photographed them in many different positions all around my frame and then edited them together in Photoshop until my computer wanted to lay down and die.

The sticks were much easier and I was very in my element. I went running down the street and began gathering every stick I could find. I brought some from my favorite spot in the forest and others were discarded in piles at people’s houses. Getting them arranged inside the box was difficult, but I made it out with only a few scratches and bruises.

I found these to be some of the simplest in the series not only for the visual component (the sticks) but for how quick the shoots were. They exemplify perhaps one of my greatest joys in the Fourth Wall series, which was combining how I naturally work with where I wanted my photography to go. These were images that felt very natural to me and simple in their thematic planning. After all, I have used sticks and keys extensively. The difference was the application. When I look at them, I can feel the forward progression of my work this past year, and that is priceless.

I hope you enjoy this new series which is on display and represented by the JoAnne Artman Gallery until February 18th. It is showing in New York City (Chelsea).

Very limited editions. Each print is offered at 42×42 inches with an edition of 2, and 8×8 inches with an edition of 3.

You may contact the gallery for purchase requests. Each print has been proofed, signed, and numbered by me, and comes with a certificate of authenticity.

—

Photographed with a Sony a7ii and a 25mm Zeiss lens.

Models: Kyna Lian (keys), self-portrait (nest)

Assistance: Kelly McGrady

When I began this series, I didn’t pull a lot of themes from my life personally. There were a couple here and there, and I believe that each of them touches our lives in some way, but only one that was truly me in every sense. I wanted to portray a fear that I have for “Fourth Wall” so that I could create it as a self-portrait and truly feel the moment of creation.

This was that image. This was a deeply personal piece to create. It started with a big ceramic egg in the hallway of my studio, which was part of a whole building of studios. I don’t know who made the egg, but there it was, sitting in the hallway. My friend brought up how neat it would be to do a photo shoot with eggs. I kept the idea in my mind. And then it hit me that I had to do it, because it so perfectly illustrated something I feel.

The only problem? I don’t buy eggs since I practice a vegan lifestyle. So, instead of buying a couple hundred eggs, I made them out of plaster. I blew up some balloons with a little bit of air so that they were still tiny, and then I mixed some plaster in a bowl. Once the plaster was the right consistency, I dipped the balloons inside and laid them out to dry. I popped them when they were firm and what was left was an eggshell.

It didn’t all go so smoothly. The plaster was very difficult to mix. If it was deep enough to accommodate the balloons, it would coagulate too fast and I could only get about 8 good balloons in a time. It required a lot of patience and re-mixing of plaster and frustrating eggs that were just too thick. After many hours of creating eggs I finally had enough to shoot with.

Since I created this one as a self-portrait, I decided to transform myself a little bit. I bought a bald cap, which was very funny to put on. I painted my whole body white which helped the bald cap blend into my skin and stick to my forehead. I stuck bits of “eggshell” on my body and onto the picture frames that I painted to be the same color as the eggshells.

This image meant a lot to me because of the theme: fragility. I have always been very sensitive to being thought of as fragile. It started with physical problems I have. I never wanted anyone to think I was less than capable. This resulted in many frustrating trips where my friends wanted to help me but I would refuse. It resulted in me hurting more than ever because I couldn’t accept help. It resulted in being more broken than I was. I have learned to shed that word in some ways. I accept help now. I try to remember that just because I can’t do one thing doesn’t mean everyone sees me as weak.

But it also stems from simple things that many people deal with, like being a tiny person. Generally I love it. For example, when I go to events I love getting hugs and being swung around in a circle. But sometimes, rarely, it rubs me the wrong way. The way a man will pick me up around my ribs without permission and comment on how tiny I am or how he could crush me, or the like. Sometimes it puts me in a position where I am made to feel out of control of my body.

I recognize that none of this is life-shattering, but it is something that I remain very sensitive about in many ways. I try not to be, I know I shouldn’t be, but there it is. So I created this image that deals with the theme of fragility. In doing so, I realized there is much more to say on this topic. I have been tossing around the idea of creating a new series as my next project in this vein. We will see what comes of it!

In the meantime, I hope you like this image. It is a personal favorite and I’m proud of how it turned out. It felt good to create from a personal place, since I don’t typically approach my art that way. It is also the first print that sold in the new series, and as such leaves only one left available at the large size. My gallery representative and I made the choice to print one of the editions as a triptych, furthering the fragile and broken theme, and I love how it turned out!

I hope you enjoy this new series which is on display and represented by the JoAnne Artman Gallery until February 18th. It is showing in New York City (Chelsea).

Very limited editions. Each print is offered at 42×42 inches with an edition of 2, and 8×8 inches with an edition of 3.

You may contact the gallery for purchase requests. Each print has been proofed, signed, and numbered by me, and comes with a certificate of authenticity.

—

Photographed with a Sony a7ii and a 25mm Zeiss lens.

Model: Self-Portrait

Assistance: Kelly McGrady

Sometimes life is funny the way we are so interconnected. I went online searching for a model for this image and was delighted when the sweetest girl offered herself up to flop over in some flour for an hour. When she arrived to my studio for the shoot, which was located inside of an abandoned high school, she told me that her mom used to attend that very high school. We imagined that she sat right there in the very room that her daughter was about to create art in. It was a really magical moment to realize that.

When I began this series, I started asking people – strangers or family – what they felt they couldn’t tell other people. A lot of people answered with a similar sentiment, which was the feeling of wanting to be one way, but everyone seeing you as someone else. I know the feeling well. There are times in our lives that we want to change, to grow, to finally become the person we have been dreaming of  being. But we have already created an identify for ourselves (or society has) and we find ourselves unable to embody the future version. We are pigeonholed and molded into who we “should” be instead of who we might become.

When I began thinking about how to visually portray this idea, my mind kept going to black and white – contrasting colors – something striking. That was when I had the idea to allow race to play some part in the image. There are always many sides to an idea, so instead of holding tightly to the theme of being held back from who you want to be, I recognized it could also be the theme of having your current identity stripped away by what others want or expect of you. The flour coating her body and exploding all around her spoke to me as a way of communicating the force of that push and pull. The way the flour stuck to her face seemed to me like a mask – the one we hide behind or the one we are given.

This image left me with yet another very difficult task. Getting 600lbs of flour up and down the stairs. By this point in the shooting process I was berating myself for agreeing to a second floor studio. It felt like every day I was battling with those stairs, or the fear that my floor would cave in. Alas, it never did, but my muscles definitely felt the burn of the heavy lifting. You know the funny thing about flour? When you get it wet it turns to dough. Cleaning was no easy task, particularly when it insisted on lodging itself between the old splintered floor boards.

Before cleanup came the shoot, however! And it was a very, very fun shoot. I bought a sleeping pad and laid it on the floor in the room. I then covered the pad with a white sheet that stretched most of the way around the room. After that, we poured flour onto the sheet and made sure the room was solidly covered. When my beautiful model arrived, I briefly explained that I had laid down a pad and that she should crouch down and side flop over onto the mat. I wanted to ensure maximum poof.

(I should definitely make t-shirts that say “MAXIMUM POOF”, right?)

We never could get the right amount of poof everywhere, but I did get enough of it that I could add some of the better poofs in with the better body position for added effect. I was so worried she would hurt herself as she fell into the flour, but she insisted she was fine and wanted to keep going. I suppose diving into a bunch of fluffy powder is kind of fun, right? So we played and played for about 30 minutes until we were all floured out.

This is one of the simpler images that I created for the series. I chose to make the walls very dark, painting them before the shoot. I really wanted the attention to go to the place of most contrast in the center of the image and not pull from that. I remember struggling on this day technically. It was very, very hot so the flour was sticking to us all. Aside from that, it was quite dark in the room so getting a shutter speed that could accommodate the movement of the flour and her body was a challenge, but eventually I found a setting I was happy with.

I hope you enjoy this new series which is on display and represented by the JoAnne Artman Gallery until February 18th. It is showing in New York City (Chelsea).

Very limited editions. Each print is offered at 42×42 inches with an edition of 2, and 8×8 inches with an edition of 3.

You may contact the gallery for purchase requests. Each print has been proofed, signed, and numbered by me, and comes with a certificate of authenticity.

—

Photographed with a Sony a7ii and a 25mm Zeiss lens.

Model: Ana Clue

Assistance: Kelly McGrady

My third shoot of the series consisted of an impossibly heavy bathtub, 50lbs of wax, and an epic 4 hour long scrub afterwards.

When I started conceiving of the series which would turn into “Fourth Wall”, I was enamored with textures. I wanted there to be a great mixture of various textures that would each have a different feel to them. I wanted the viewer to feel as though he or she could reach in to the image and touch different layers. I wanted the walls to feel grungy, the yarn to be fuzzy, the wax to be cracked and smooth. I had so many ideas for textures, but the image that struck me as having the most potential was this one.

I was initially going to shoot this image with a black floor so that the wax would stand out even more. However, after testing it that way, I decided I couldn’t give up the natural texture of the original hardwood floors. Fun fact: I shot the series in a studio, but that studio was actually a room in an abandoned high school that has since been turned into artist studios…in a semi-abandoned ghost town, no less.

I began searching for wax that didn’t use any animal products and finally settled on soy wax, as I read that it is safe to touch skin. The hunt for the bathtub was easy; the practicality of getting it up to my second floor studio was not. I had recently finished hauling 800lbs of sand up the stairs, so not only were my legs and arms sore, I had no faith in my (or my friends) ability to lift this bathtub. I hired a couple of vets to do the lifting and they were amazing. Even those two burly men had the time of their lives trying to maneuver the tub up the stairs. After about an hour the ordeal was done (until it was time to haul it out).

Once the bathtub was in place, the wax was ordered and I had finished my testing to see what the wax would dry like and if it was safe to put on my skin, I asked my friend to come model for the image. In these situations, where you are asking someone to do something completely insane, I feel you must turn to friends first.

Several challenges presented themselves. First, the wax took some time to dry and I had to apply it in layers. Therefore, my model had to sit in the bathtub in the same position for roughly 2 hours as I continuously heated the wax, filled a pitcher, poured it, and waited for it to dry. It was a difficult process, and throughout she was getting hotter and hotter as her body heat was trapped under the warm wax. I rolled a pillow and put it under her back for support, but eventually she had to try and fall asleep to forget about the difficulty of staying still and waiting.

Another challenge was how slippery everything became. The floor was slippery, the tub was slippery, and eventually my hands felt like slick stumps. Many towels were used that day to try and remedy the situation. I put fabric over her eyes to protect her when it came time to “wax” her face. Her hair stuck to the tub when I poured it through her hair.

I remember when we were ready to shoot I finally climbed my ladder and looked down at her and the pattern the wax had created. I was filled with that amazing feeling when something you have planned for looks exactly as you had hoped. The wax was an important tool for me to communicate with. I felt it so perfectly portrayed the feeling of being trapped – stagnant, unmoving, timeless. It only took a few clicks to know it was right, especially since she couldn’t move!

I will never forget that day. We took turns holding fans over her to cool her and the wax down faster. We took turns feeding her to keep her energy up. And when I finished and it was time to get her out of the tub, I will never forget the difficulty of peeling her hair off of the side of the bathtub. When she stood up her hair made a right angle and moved perpendicular to her neck. Her hair was stiff as a board and sticking straight off of her head. I wrapped her in my best Doctor Who robe and we went out to the bathrooms. Can you imagine the sight she was to behold?

After some time scrubbing it was clear that we needed much more than a sink. She spent 4 hours that night in my bathtub trying to get the wax off. With some baking soda and dish detergent the job eventually was won, and I had a picture I was truly elated about.

This has been the most interesting piece to display because of how people feel about it. I have heard many reactions that have been quite negative to it, and I understand that entirely. It is overtly creepy and has a definite sexual nature to it (in many intended ways). But that is what I love about creating. It isn’t for praise but for conversation. Differing opinions. I am grateful that this piece could do that.

I hope you enjoy this new series which is on display and represented by the JoAnne Artman Gallery until February 18th. It is showing in New York City (Chelsea).

Very limited editions. Each print is offered at 42×42 inches with an edition of 2, and 8×8 inches with an edition of 3.

You may contact the gallery for purchase requests. Each print has been proofed, signed, and numbered by me, and comes with a certificate of authenticity.

—

Photographed with a Sony a7ii and a 25mm Zeiss lens.

Model: KD Stapleton

Assistance: Kelly McGrady

It started in a grocery store.

For months I had been dreaming of this image. In my mind I saw a woman in it with long silvery hair. I looked into buying wigs but was holding out to find just the right person. I looked on local modeling and agency websites but just couldn’t find the perfect fit. Until…

I was grocery shopping in my small town store, perusing the veggies as I am fond of doing, when I looked up and saw a woman with the most perfect long, gray hair. I looked at my husband and without saying any of what I was thinking, he said, “YES”. I am such a shy person that I battled with myself for a moment before going over. I rehearsed what I would say and my face kept turning red, but eventually, with some gentle nudging, I walked over to my mystery silver-haired lady.

I introduced myself awkwardly as she looked a little bit confused. She was hesitant to take part in the series for good reason. Here I was – looking particularly hippie-ish that day – approaching a stranger in a grocery store to model for a fine art series I was creating. I didn’t even have any examples to show yet of what it would be. Heck, I wasn’t even sure if it would work out. But I took the leap, and gave her my information, and left without a yes or no. She said she would look at my website and get back to me.

A little while later a glowing email appeared in my inbox. She had written me. My mystery grocery store woman! And she said yes. She said she felt a connection to what I was doing and was happy to model for me. I told her we’d make it a special shoot on my birthday and I prepared to make sure everything was absolutely ready for her arrival.

Preparing for this image turned out to be a hilarious task. Step one was to find a bed, which I found fairly quickly online for a good price. The problem? It was too tall. So, myself, my husband, and my friend got to work sawing the legs off the bed so that it would sit lower to the ground.

Next, I had to find a mattress. I am two things: stubborn and frugal. So, not wanting to spend money and desiring an already yucky mattress, I opted for a mattress that had been thrown out behind a mattress store. It was filthy, disgusting, stinky, moldy…everything awful. And yes, I am entirely aware of how incredibly stupid it is to pick a mattress off the street. Nonetheless, I did it. And aside from spreading mold to the floors and walls and potentially contracting some unknown rash, I was fine. Feel free to strike that last sentence from your memory. I know my friend has, who was so opposed to this idea I thought she would throw herself from my moving car. She came around, though. Here is said friend actually laying on the mattress for a test shot. Oh, the things we do for friendship!

Once the bed and mattress were obtained it was time to get sand. I insisted that we drive to some sand dunes about 5 hours from my house. I wanted authentic sand. I wanted the real deal. I wanted to be able to say: I GATHERED THAT SAND WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS IN THE HOT DESERT SUN! So that is what I did, sort of.

When I got to the sand dunes temperatures were reaching 120 degrees Fahrenheit. I get very sick in hot temperatures so I was already fading the moment we arrived. I couldn’t pull my car close to the dunes so we had to resort to walking up the dunes with trash bags and dragging them back to the car. This proved to be a physically taxing process, as the bags were very heavy and the sun was very hot. We were burning fast.

After about eight trash bags full of sand I decided I had reached my limit, and I left feeling slightly defeated. The day, however, was memorable and amazingly fun. I will never forget the onlookers thinking we were bonkers for trying to drag sand back to my car.

The rest of the sand I got from my favorite store (NOT) – Home Depot. All together it totaled 800lbs of sand. I reserved my beautiful sand dune sand for the top layer so that it would look yellow and smooth compared to the manufactured stuff. It was important to me that the sand be authentic because that sand came from hundreds upon thousands of years of breakdown and decay. I loved the idea that it would be even more held in history through a photograph.

It also served to further the idea of the image – time passing yet feeling trapped in it as well. It moves so quickly, and yet we are held in place by the fear of missing something. The spine – a whole other story in itself – was placed to show the decay that happens to us all, and to everything. The rotting bed was being taken over by death. The long, silvery hair that I so longed for helped to tell the story of a person who has been so stagnant that even her hair is growing into the scene.

I got asked many times at the Fourth Wall show opening if I manipulated the model’s hair to have a blue cast. I did not. Because of the color balance of the sand, anything neutral, including the walls and mattress, naturally had a blue hue to them even though they were all gray. I loved the effect and kept it in the final image.

When the day to shoot came, it was a beautiful one. The sun was shining, it was warm out, and my beautiful grocery store model even brought me hand crafted jewelry for my birthday. Since the setup was finished when she arrived we got to work shooting, which was faster than the first image in the series, and before I knew it I had my birthday wish – an image that I loved. I found it so fitting that I should shoot this image about time passing on my 29th birthday.

I hope you enjoy this new series which is on display and represented by the JoAnne Artman Gallery until February 18th. It is showing in New York City (Chelsea).

Very limited editions. Each print is offered at 42×42 inches with an edition of 2, and 8×8 inches with an edition of 3.

You may contact the gallery for purchase requests. Each print has been proofed, signed, and numbered by me, and comes with a certificate of authenticity.

—

Photographed with a Sony a7ii and a 25mm Zeiss lens.

Model: SLC

Assistance: Kelly McGrady

I had an idea that I didn’t know how to accomplish. I live for moments like those. There is a split second where you have an idea, know inherently that it is unchartered territory, and you decide right then and there if you are committed. At least that is how my life works. I am very quick to commit or to know when not to commit.

I had an idea to build a room within a room. I started telling my family that I was going to try to build something with my own two hands and inevitably everyone laughed at me, though all in good fun. I have never built anything in my life. I have never properly tried. I always hid behind the excuse of not being good at it. Isn’t it astonishing how often we use the excuse that we aren’t good at something when we have never really given it a proper go? I have very little natural talent in me. I work really hard to master skills. It doesn’t come easily. So I decided that if I was going to create a new series then I was going to go all in, whether it made me comfortable or not.

I got to work building. I wound up at a Home Depot one day wandering the aisles, not having any real idea of where to start. The men working there were not all too nice to me. They clearly thought I was out of my depth and had no faith in the project I was beginning. They laughed, made off-handed comments, and pointed while rolling their eyes down the wooden beam aisle. It was a little bit uncomfortable. But then I realized that their behavior is exactly why I felt I couldn’t do something like this. It is because of people, myself included, giving me the old eye roll that I felt I shouldn’t even try.

So, I gathered my supplies and got to work building a 7 foot by 7 foot room with no windows or doors.

I can say, without question, that it was not the best built room in the world. I accidentially bought nails that were too long so they poked through the walls. My 2x4s were bowing. The pattern of the wood kept showing through the paint. But you know what? It stood up. It never collapsed. It served it’s purpose. And I daresay I have never been prouder of an accomplishment than building that room with my two friends.

The room took three days to build, and once it was finished I had to begin the first image. It was the image I first saw in my mind when I conceived of the series, so I decided to create it first as inspiration for the other images. It was so vivid in my mind I knew exactly where to start and how it would look.

With any new endeavor there are setbacks and unforeseen circumstances. First, there was the challenge of how to shoot from above. If I simply climbed a ladder and held my camera out over the room, everything was off center and it still wasn’t quite high enough. I decided to invest in a video camera slider which I mounted upside down on the ceiling (only after poking a massive hole in the ceiling first). I bought a ball-head tripod connector which I attached to the slider so that I could rotate my camera in any direction I might need. For each image, I mounted my camera on the slider and triggered the camera remotely.

I had wanted to shoot through old film cameras, but their field of view wasn’t wide enough for the room I was shooting in. Therefore, I decided to shoot through the film cameras for the texture only, which I will detail in a future post.

The next step was “yarning”, as I would affectionately (NOT) come to call it. Yarning the room took ages and ages and a lot of sore fingers and backs. It took myself and my assistant over 60 hours to lay the yarn down in the room. I bought spray adhesive which we sprayed onto black poster board (in case of any gaps, I wanted it to look dark underneath) and once the spray adhesive was down, we would lay a piece of yard in a circular pattern. She would cut, I would glue. And sometimes vice versa. It was a lot of work being hunched over for such long periods of time, and our fingers got really sore from having the glue stick to them. My fingers looked like little tufts of red poofs by the end of each day, absolutely filled with yarn residue.

The time came to shoot. Who, though, do you ask to model when the model has to sew red yarn under her hand? I couldn’t do it for her, but I did test it thoroughly on myself to make sure she wouldn’t be doing herself harm. I wanted her hand to mimic the yarn on the floor in the same pattern so that it looked like blood coming from her and spilling outward.

I knew I couldn’t hire someone totally new, just in case things went horribly wrong, so I called on my sister-in-law! She is one of my favorite people to photograph anyway, and she has a flare for the creepy, so I knew she would be on board. Here is her response when I asked:

I knew I married into that family for a reason.

I brought her out to my studio and we got to work. She sewed for 3.5 hours in a beautiful pattern on her hand while I put the finishing touches on the room. (I promise it was all very safe and sterile!). There were several challenges, like how the red yarn didn’t stand out very well where it overlapped. I had wanted strands of it to come from the corners and out into the center of the room, but I realized quickly that was something I would have to enhance in post. I did very little work to the images overall, however. For this image I enhanced the yarn as well as made her hand stand out with the thread on it.

The studio I was shooting in had 3 full walls of windows, so there was plenty of natural light filtering into the space. I let that natural light spill naturally into the room I had built. The room was roughly 8 feet tall and the ceiling of the studio was about 12 feet tall, so there was enough room for the light to meander.

When we finally got her in the room, I noticed that I had left too much of a gap for her body where the yarn wasn’t touching. I decided to shoot that day anyway and then do more yarning after that I would add in later. It worked out really well, since we had limited time together and I had to send her back to the other side of the country soon after. Not to mention she was already “threaded”. Eek.

Once she got in we did a few test shots without going fully nude yet. Since it was my first official shoot in the room, I had to test the best focus length and angles. Once she was in position, I poured vegetable oil in her hair to give it a wet look without having to continuously re-wet her hair in case the shoot took a long time. For me, it did take a long time. I had her in the box for about 40 minutes. A typical shoot of mine would take about 10.

After I got the images that I was wanting from above, I took my camera down, opened our giant swiveling wall, and shot some from ground level.

The sun started streaming in the windows. I knew that the day was almost over at that point, but I felt an immense sense of gratitude for the shoot coming together. I had been conceiving of the image for 4 months before I finally got to make it happen. A lot of unknowns went into it and I felt stronger and more creative for having pushed myself. I felt I had hit the right medium between my old work and where I wanted to go. It was recognizable yet distinctly different. It was exactly what my heart needed.

This image started out personal for me. I wanted to create a series around the things we keep inside; the things we feel that we can’t tell anyone. I wanted to be able to voyueristically peer into someone else’s inner-workings and symbolically represent the emotions we all feel. For this image, I pulled from my experience of giving too much of myself, of being run ragged and trying to spread yourself too thin. So many people have lost their identity because of their need to put others first. The red yarn was my symbol for blood. The choice of a thin model was my symbol of losing yourself. The choice of the thread under the skin was to show that even inside of her, her most precious space, something foreign enters.

I welcome any meaning to the image and I don’t intend for it to have just one. That was where it started, though. And for me, where it will always have a place in my heart.

I hope you enjoy this new series which is on display and represented by the JoAnne Artman Gallery until February 18th. It is showing in New York City (Chelsea).

Very limited editions. Each print is offered at 42×42 inches with an edition of 2, and 8×8 inches with an edition of 3.

You may contact the gallery for purchase requests. Each print has been proofed, signed, and numbered by me, and comes with a certificate of authenticity.

—

Photographed with a Sony a7ii and a 25mm Zeiss lens.

Model: Steph Pez

Assistance: Kelly McGrady, KD Stapleton