A 35mm VISUAL DIARY
Gleanings from a field of vision;
harvested from context, place, and time.
harvested from context, place, and time.
There are no answers to be found upon shedding skins or lifting shrouds of illusion, only substrates of primordial questions. The empirical and theoretical are merely two sides of the same elusive coin. The occult, by definition, is hidden. The incarnate: an organic slime of blood and tissue perpetually slipping through the cracks in our perception.
Things might be otherwise.
We must seek solace somewhere in the in-between, straddling the literal and subliminal, or spend our finite spans in pursuit of the infinitely incomprehensible. If there are absolutes of existence they are avoiding our gaze: dancing, fluttering, oscillating outside our field of *vision,* lampooning our preposterous series of efforts to codify that which in light of itself cannot be contained (particularly from within). We have engaged in millennia of navel-gazing in an attempt to subdue the eternal with “knowledge” – a hazy and shifting shadow of Truth – and counterarguments.
We do not – cannot – speak the language of the cosmos.
This is a call to abandon, at least once in a while, this futile industry of *understanding.* Let us revel in the HERE and NOW as we elementarily understand them to be. Suspend all applications of categorical “-isms” and orphic interpretations in favor of simplicity.
These images confer one creature’s perspective: They represent little more than an effort to delay the inevitable entropy of memory and fulfill the impossible and insatiable desire to prolong an experience. they are an embrace of the terrestrial, day-to-day, humdrum, and routine–pulling moments of intrigue from the banal and familiar; glorification of the mortal & material; the intersection of observation/action, location, and testimony; a revelation of *things* thaumaturgically hidden; signs and wonders of the garden variety...
also: excerpts from the archives, memos, an origin point, context of a mo(ve)ment, peripheral details, surrender to presence, re-acquaintance with the defamiliarized, the omnipresence of beauty, intentional acceptance of circumstance (as distinct from resignation), subplot observations, preservation of phenomena, proof of existence, overturning familiar stones in search of inspiration, rejection of the pursuit of greener shades of grass, an achronological record, documentation of a life being lived in and of itself.
2017 - ad infinitum
updated: july 2025
NATURE
NURTURE
NATURE & NURTURE: though historically viewed as dueling keys to unlock our understanding of personhood; contemporary psychology has reconsidered them as dual necessities. The traditional approach of either/or – nature vs. nurture – fractures the whole of CARE: the generative element of nature + the sustaining power of nurture. The Nature/Nurture continuum cannot be divided into isolated binaries. Together they constitute the necessary and sufficient conditions of life itself; to exalt one over the other creates a false hierarchy and undermines the totality of the human experience.
The images in this series exploring the relationship between nature and nurture draw from my own experiences with the pervasive perception of a schism lurking between the two. We look to one or the other to account for the mysterious origins of psychopathy, success, abuse, health, temperament, and intelligence: which generates what?
Though separate images, the dark unknowable edges of the composition, experience, and genetic makeup bleed into each other creating cohesion: a whole. I am evoking a vision of idealized cooperation between the two, and a reminder that we are living observations of an ongoing conversation between the raw origin point of nature and the intervention of nurture. Whether we are seeking absolution or commendation for the roles we play; neither nature nor nurture–exclusively–are as important as we would like to believe.
The images in this series exploring the relationship between nature and nurture draw from my own experiences with the pervasive perception of a schism lurking between the two. We look to one or the other to account for the mysterious origins of psychopathy, success, abuse, health, temperament, and intelligence: which generates what?
Though separate images, the dark unknowable edges of the composition, experience, and genetic makeup bleed into each other creating cohesion: a whole. I am evoking a vision of idealized cooperation between the two, and a reminder that we are living observations of an ongoing conversation between the raw origin point of nature and the intervention of nurture. Whether we are seeking absolution or commendation for the roles we play; neither nature nor nurture–exclusively–are as important as we would like to believe.
NATURE/NURTURE, Round 01 (2025). Sixteen images of objects and concepts in both their natural and nurtured states were formatted into a DIY zine with a question accompanying each image on a detachable perforated pamphlet. The questions asked readers to consider the relationships between biology, autonomy, identity, and motherhood and prompted participants to reflect on collective stereotypes and assumptions regarding care and nurturance. Readers are encouraged to send me their responses to any/all of the questions asked to inform further iterations of the NATURE/NURTURE project. The questions included were selected from an ongoing list compiled over the past decade. I am continuing to print copies of the zine for distribution and awaiting responses.
If you would like to participate or receive a zine (free to caregivers or $5 suggested donation)
please reach out
please reach out
HEAVY DREAMS
winter 2025
hand cut collage & digital photograph diptychs
A nightmare:
A pit in the gut, a racing mind, labored breath, a throbbing heart.
A desperate call yearning for response, seeking that which eludes detection.
Feet pounding through a labyrinth of unfamiliar dusty streets as a purple storm approaches across desert plains.
A clock tower announcing the hours of a frenzied search: simultaneously speeding by and suspended in fear.
A high-stakes and nonconsensual game of Marco Polo... cat and mouse... hide and seek...
hand cut collage & digital photograph diptychs
A nightmare:
A pit in the gut, a racing mind, labored breath, a throbbing heart.
A desperate call yearning for response, seeking that which eludes detection.
Feet pounding through a labyrinth of unfamiliar dusty streets as a purple storm approaches across desert plains.
A clock tower announcing the hours of a frenzied search: simultaneously speeding by and suspended in fear.
A high-stakes and nonconsensual game of Marco Polo... cat and mouse... hide and seek...
ABSENCE AS FORM is a series of digital images inspired by the shrouded figures recurring in the backgrounds of child portraits made in the early photography studios of the 1840s-1920. These “hidden mothers” were an effort to keep children still for the long exposure times necessary to render an image, often up to thirty seconds. In ABSENCE AS FORM children are replaced by symbols of motherhood, femininity, fertility, and care; though the hidden mother remains. The black & white treatment and long exposure times emulate the processes of the era and honor the taxing physical conditions of early portraiture.
In the making of these images, a loose narrative of “matrescence” materialized. A term used to describe “the time of mother-becoming
If the veiled figures of the antique hidden mothers were attempts to obscure presence – to create the illusion of absence – ABSENCE AS FORM gives shape to a void.
FALL 2024
plural sanctuaries.
- a sacred or holy place.
Synonyms: adytum, sanctum, shrine, altar, temple, church - Judaism.
- the Biblical tabernacle or the Temple in Jerusalem.
- the holy of holies of these places of worship.
- an especially holy place in a temple or church.
- the part of a church around the altar; the chancel.
- a church or other sacred place where fugitives were formerly entitled to immunity from arrest.
- immunity afforded by refuge in such a place.
- any place of refuge; asylum.
- a tract of land where birds and wildlife, especially those hunted for sport, can breed and take refuge in safety from hunters.
SANCTUARY
is born of a personal, lifelong, and evolving relationship to religion and the questions begged by its existence, history, and reported decline within U.S. culture
SANCTUARY
is rooted in my own experiences raised by Evangelical missionaries in Latin America
SANCTUARY
is the exploration of sacred spaces and rituals as containers for refuge and community
is a constellation of ongoing visual studies of religious sites and communities* around Seattle, Washington, USA. These images reflect my own positionality: caught somewhere between participant and observer as I work to understand my relationship to the divine (in all of its manifestations across time & space) and an involuntary emotional/psychological response to being in the presence of spiritual spaces and iconography. As observers, we broach the practical and social roles of religious institutions and traditions. In participation, we are linking ourselves to communities, gestures, and actions derived from apparently inherent principles and a collective unconscious; components of the human equation devalued in an increasingly digitized, analytic, and individualistic world.
2024-ongoing
*Co Lam Pagoda,
Watt Dhammacakkaram,
Immaculate Conception Church,
Blessed Sacrament Church,
& St. James Cathedral
2024-ongoing
*Co Lam Pagoda,
Watt Dhammacakkaram,
Immaculate Conception Church,
Blessed Sacrament Church,
& St. James Cathedral
“Just as a church constitutes a break in plane in the profane space of a modern city, the service celebrated inside it marks a break in profane temporal duration.” - Mircea Eliade
TEMP-LUM/US (2025) (from latin, templum [temple] and tempus [time]/ shared root temp- “time”)
Sacred time is circular; periodical, marking ritualistic festivals within a cycle; and “by its very nature sacred time is reversible.”
SANCTUARY, 2024:
THIS IS WHERE WE:
SLEEP AND EAT AND
BATHE AND COOK
AND CUT AND PASTE
AND CLEAN AND
CREATE AND
DESTROY AND LEARN
AND ASK AND
ANSWER AND HEAL
AND READ AND PLAY
AND THINK AND
REMEMBER AND FORGET
AND WORK AND
WRITE AND LISTEN
AND LAUGH AND SING
AND CRY AND SCREAM
AND TALK AND ARGUE
AND LOVE AND LIVE AND
REST
digital scans of darkroom prints
WINTER 2024
RAW B00TS
We spent the months of July and August of 2018 living out of our electric blue Volkswagen Eurovan. We traveled from our home in Seattle, Washington through Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, North & South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, & Texas.
On our journey we encountered: natural cauldrons tinged yellow, red, and blue by microscopic communities; shrines to hubris and salvation; dwelling places of the living and the dead; the ingredients of a small town priest’s magnum opus: agate, azurite, barite, calcite, copper, drusy quartz, fluorite, geodes, gold, jasper, lapiz, malachite, petrified wood, & quartz; an exact replica of a thousand year old house of worship; the personal and historical monuments of a father’s hometown; rhythmic patterns of nature unfurling herself across a continent; and varying tabernacles of faith, art, music, truth, transience, wisdom, and history.
On our journey we encountered: natural cauldrons tinged yellow, red, and blue by microscopic communities; shrines to hubris and salvation; dwelling places of the living and the dead; the ingredients of a small town priest’s magnum opus: agate, azurite, barite, calcite, copper, drusy quartz, fluorite, geodes, gold, jasper, lapiz, malachite, petrified wood, & quartz; an exact replica of a thousand year old house of worship; the personal and historical monuments of a father’s hometown; rhythmic patterns of nature unfurling herself across a continent; and varying tabernacles of faith, art, music, truth, transience, wisdom, and history.
the color blue
experiences of faith in the unknown
truth and its revelation
&
wisdom as guiding action
travel
sacred spaces
(constructed & naturally occurring)
family
intuition
textures of the land
&
the movement of three bodies
2018
35mm film photographs
Cleveland, OH