I’m addicted to the half-erased, the torn, the eleventh-hour. For most of my life I have collected what’s generally uncared for. When I was very young, my mother used to drag me through antique markets for hours, and perhaps this has a lot to do with my current emotional and aesthetic attraction to things. Even now though, I tend to gravitate toward “antiques” or natural things that I find, that have more than one foot in the grave. It’s a challenge to try and evoke a sense of the object’s history through what material of the object remains. These half imaginary, half-felt (real?) possibilities inherent in an object, are what drive me often as an artist. Some days I’m embarrassed to say that I’m addicted to nostalgia because nostalgia implies Hallmark sayings and bad dried flower arrangements and new furniture that’s been “antiqued.” This embarrassment too though, serves as inspiration, because it inspires me to distance myself from such creations, and to make art that is authentic. When I’m making such art, I want to feel a little bit afraid, because of the reality it’s trying to convey. Which is loss. Which is losing and knowing it, but trying to retrieve something anyway.
I wouldn’t say that I’m not living in the present, but my attentions are very much invested in reviving and discovering the irrecoverable past. I realize the contradiction. The contradiction is what keeps me interested and obsessed. Often by using fragments of writing I will attempt to create the tone of “just missed.” The satisfaction for me becomes what can’t be satisfied.
I wouldn’t say that I’m not living in the present, but my attentions are very much invested in reviving and discovering the irrecoverable past. I realize the contradiction. The contradiction is what keeps me interested and obsessed. Often by using fragments of writing I will attempt to create the tone of “just missed.” The satisfaction for me becomes what can’t be satisfied.