Excavations

I like to refer to myself as a ‘Tra-Digital’ media artist; I create mixed media work using a combination of traditional and digital tools. In the Excavations series of work featured here, I start by mark making with acrylic paint, brushes, and found objects, with a focus on handheld tools that emphasize layering and texture. I digitally scan these traditional marks and combine them with digital painting processes to generate dynamic image composites intended to comment upon improvisation and play.

I’m fascinated with repurposing tools, and what it means to do so from both a technical and conceptual perspective. Mapping the manipulation of marks and found objects is important to me- building a heightened understanding of a workflow by charting the same path repeatedly, and observing resulting growth. I study how new iterations of marks evolve over time through slight variation, similar to how tools and technologies themselves evolve.

I embed natural ephemera, analog maps, and blueprints into my work as a means of contrasting where we come from to where we are. My work draws comparison between the natural and the technical world; both can be regulated, but have the capacity to grow independently into a role other than that which was intended. Tech shapes us in that it pushes us to keep growing in both planned and unexpected ways; we are driven to advance our technologies because curiosity and experimentation are fundamentally human. This work also explores the possibility of what happens when conventional tools are removed; the natural world takes over and we find new ways to substitute what we have. Evolution takes improvisation into hand.

I believe enmeshing analog and digital elements provides a unique opportunity for storytelling and celebrating materiality. The disruption of both traditional and tech-based workflows helps us understand further what they are and what they can be.