For me, the process of image-making is an effort to compress time and space within a surface. Like terrain, I consider the picture plane as a moldable surface containing embedded layers. Paper texture, fabric weave, film grain, and digital aberrations all echo perceptual interferences such as heat waves, dust, and sand. Throughout my work, the surface of the earth can be seen as a corollary to surfaces of other planets such as the moon and Mars. In seeking out space analogues, I connect the feeling of touching ground in an unfamiliar place with landscapes that are only accessible through devices, data, and imagination.
Imagery for these works comes from photographs I took in the deserts of Qatar and Southern California, geology specimens from glass lantern slides, paper models I made, and as well as reels of silver gelatin printed images from the Viking Landers taken on Mars in the mid-1970s. Informed by methods of planetary imaging, and the history of optics, perspective, and pictorial space, this work examines how meaning can be altered from one translation to the next while still appearing as an accurate account.
