Artist’s Statement
Materially manifest in the strata of the municipal woodpile I photograph each time I offload my domestic waste are relics of the human body’s operation in the interior and exterior spaces, along with evidence of the passage of time, movement of goods, the delineation of property lines, as well as human intentions, accomplishments, failures, procrastinations, and the inexorable march from birth to death, with (if we’re lucky) many trips to the curb, dump or recycling center in between. Ultimately, these heaps of intimate yet anonymous artifacts reflect how we use our most valuable resources of time, energy, attention, and space.
Entitled Towns’ Mounds, the resultant series of photos of these tidal piles as they wax and wane, monumentalizing both accumulation and release. These communally-created and constantly changing collections of discards embody barely controlled chaos, paying tribute to our individual efforts to “do the right thing,” i.e., place things where they will be repurposed and reconfigured into something else, as flawed and inadequate as these efforts inevitably turn out to be.
