Artists Statement:


I am in a colorful psychedelic world of large watercolor flowers. I am circling over the heads of terrified onlookers laying waste to their cities and incinerating their loved ones with my red-hot ray of death. I am slithering through cracks in the cement, eagerly seeking out my next meal of scrumptious juicy leaves.

Video, drawing, photography, and computer-generated imagery are the components of my short narratives. These videos are about layers. Pulling from a sea of pop culture imagery, my brief stories are admittedly nostalgic, recontextualizing imagery of the past to address contemporary ideals. By appropriating imagery from societies collective subconscious I am constantly reshaping the familiar.

Video is layered onto simple animation, creating a low-tech fantasy world of endless possibility. Real characters traverse watercolor landscapes. A flower becomes life-sized. Drawn characters explore our recognizable world. These possibilities allow the world of animation and live video to come together and exist on the same plane.

Layering my video leaves it deliberately unrefined. I am true to my materials. A drawing will always be a drawing in these videos; there is no attempt to blur the line between the real and imagined. Everything is imagined. These videos are part of an anti-aesthetic that seeks to separate itself from an accepted paradigm of slick C.G.I. The more refined it becomes the more ordinary it is, relegating itself to an existence of mediocrity and sameness.

Each archetypal character is merely a derivative of my personality. I allow myself to perform each one of these roles. These universal characters engage and relate to the widest possible audience. I do not feel the need to tell a completed story, but rather to provide the situation, the characters, and the possibilities for the audience to relate to through previous experiences. Exploring narrative video has allowed me to reassess my expectations of cinematic storytelling. My goal is to push the boundaries between narrative art and short film.