Interview by Taylor Martin

So Taylor Martin asked some people some questions and I was one of those people. I thought it might be illuminating to anyone who is curious as to how I might feel about art and image making.



1. how do you think the process by which an image is made factors into how it is interpreted? do you think an image is just an image, or is the process by which it is made integral to how you perceive it?

of course an image is not just an image! art is communication, and everything that goes into creating that communication is a part of the communication as well. when you speak, your knowledge, perspective, preconceptions, experiences, prejudices, preferences, world-view, and ideals are all a part of how, why, and what you speak. art is no different! everything that goes into the creation of art is a material, including yourself, so any part of the work materially should be considered a part of the communication, and the materials or processes used to create that work should inform the communication.

but, ahhhh, also, thinking about 'the print' - it's sort of, for me, an abstraction, and i'm able to look at the image without thinking about 'the print' or, rather, the paper that the image is printed on. also, painting, you know, the paint in all the older stuff is all sort of irrelevant, but then, you know, pollock and them came along and started making stuff about painting, so... i mean, they got it, but then where do you go from there? soo i still think it depends on what you're trying to communicate, but maybe materials aren't always so important? if you're making work about a material, the material directly informs the work, but if you're making say, a documentary about homeless kids, or something, you're not necessarily going to use, like, body parts of homeless kids. you could use maybe their clothes? i don't know, but in that case, i think the point -is- the image, because the point of documentary work is to --show--, to present a 'document' of a reality. but, -how- you took those photographs could be important: did you live with them and run around with them and immerse yourself, or did you just pop up out of nowhere trying to be objective? i think that's important, and i think it's something you can tell in the images, or maybe should be able to.

2. do you think there is such a thing as a universal visual language? meaning, do you think there are certain visual languages that have been established by culture that have the potential to communicate to a wide audience? think about languages that could have potentially been established by painting, the invention of photography, or by film.

yes, definitely. there's all sorts of ways of communicating! every sort of interaction involves some level of communication, including the interaction between a viewer and a work of art. the art, created by an artist, is meant to communicate an idea, so without using words, the artist uses visual language to communicate. the birth of art was communication, cave paintings meant to convey meaning. since then, the language has been built on and expanded upon, and like our written and spoken language, there are cliches along with overused phrases, catchphrases, fad sorts of phrases, phrases that come in phases, slang, counterculture language, feminist language, gendered language, etc. etc. the same sorts of patterns that we find in spoken language can easily be found in visual language, as well as musical language. there's all sorts of languages we've invented, and they all inform each other, since they are all just methods of communication.

3. do you think a single image or a group of still images has the potential to carry narrative?

absolutely. there's no doubt as to the ability of people to create narrative out of absolutely anything, because there's something about us that craves a good story. history is a great big old story and we're livin' it, and since we've been raised on stories, we expect our lives to be stories, and we expect everything in life to sort of fall into these narratives that we've been told for years and years, right on back through dickens, to shakespeare, way on back to old man homer and those greeks, we've been telling ourselves stories since the dawn of man, and makin' stuff up like gods that are creating us! most of us believe some sort of story that involves someone else sort of making a story out of us! it's crazy! so, yes, an image or a group of images can certainly carry a narrative - as can a crumpled cigarette stub lying on the pavement, or a sickly neon light glowing ghastly orange on into the ashy night, or a car left for sale on the side of the road, forlorn like a highway hitchhiker.

4. how do you think that a society saturated by images has affected the way we perceive images?

the language just gets more and more complex, and we come to a point where it's really, really hard to actually 'see' because we're so overwhelmed with all the looking, and when you open your eyes it's hard not to see images, just picture postcards of places and moments, like a sunset in florida, or the birth of your first child, or a grandmother lying peacefully in a hospital bed, exhausted, scared, confused, perplexed, hurt, wronged sorts of tears trailing down your cheeks...

and life isn't able to be lived without documentation! the digital camera has become another intermediary, with folks photographing absolutely everything in the same sort of way, the same poses, the same smiles, the same happiness for posterity, because we don't photograph misery, we want to communicate eternal happiness from the walls of our living rooms, and from the profiles of our online identities, so that we're forever frozen in a moment in which we're happy to be around others, and they are happy to be near us, when the next moment outside of the frame is perhaps an awkward scattering, but at the very least a separation, while in photo albums we can live from one happy moment to the next, jumping past all the slower seconds spent lying in bed, watching the sun go down behind dusty blinds, past the alarm going off and the shower too cold, the waiting for a telephone call and driving on endless highways, and, looking at the stop-motion glee of the framed life, we feel nostalgic, and on some level jealous of this fabrication, so that the nostalgia is twinged with a prick of sadness, because loneliness can never really be banished.

5. do you have any general theories you abide by when making or looking at images? perhaps your own art theory?

well, i believe that art is communication, plain and simple, so i think about the basic stuff - how, why, what is this person communicating? to whom? and i try to answer those questions in varying degrees of specificity and value. for example, the 'to whom' may not be important to me, or it may be very general (i.e. anyone/everyone), but usually the why and what are pretty important, and the how.