Statement

I have worked as a professional artist for over twenty years, using media such as oil paint, color slides, and black-and-whie photography. For the past nine years, I have been making photographs and videos of animals in zoos. I photograph the animal and later digitally manipulate the source material in various ways—such as removing the background (as in Untitled #8, 2006) in order to better see the creature, or by changing the original color (as in Untitled #1 from the Blue Butterfly series) to emphasize the formal beauty of the insect or by creating an abstract composition (as in Untitled #1 from the Honeycomb series) to highlight the complex architecture created by the insect. With my video work, I create original footage paired with a soundscape I design using found audio sources such as a news radio recording on the Web or a sound effect CD.