ARTIST STATEMENT

My work questions the role of prints and printed matter in urban landscapes.  The exterior walls of many of the world’s cities are covered with colorful posters, street artwork, advertisements, and other printed matter. This printed “skin” represents a discourse among advertisers, political sloganists, artists, passers-by, and other pedestrian voices: crossing out or altering previously written messages, tearing away and pasting new posters, and otherwise raising a wide variety of personal, public, or existential concerns.  This phenomen raises important questions about the aesthetic possibilities of our cities. 

My artistic practice involves methodically exploring a city’s walls and urban spaces, photographing and collecting scraps of torn posters.  I then recycle these collections through various structural processes to question their aesthetic, symbolic, or political significance. I arrange groupings of these photographs, prints, and poster scraps into typological wall installations. I also cut, fold, and reassemble these images into collages.  By recycling and reprocessing urban information in these ways my work functions within a specific local discourse, but it also engages universal discussions surrounding strategies of disseminating political, economic, social, or aesthetic information.