Drawing made sense of the world for me from the time I was a young child in San Francisco until I was a graduate student in art at UC Berkeley
When I started working with photography, the graphic quality of the image won me over, as well as memories of the great photography I poured over with every new issue of Life Magazine.
I work with the portrait and with architecture, often in the context of urban landscapes. Most of the portraits are done in my studio or during artist residencies, where I work in schools and community centers . I devised a self-portrait Polaroid process to give agency to the sitter. In urban landscapes, I am looking at human spaces in transition. Due to gentrification and redevelopment, many buildings awaiting a makeover are covered in graffiti and multiple layers of paint, resulting in ” found paintings”. These layered wonders suit the process I work with, and become records of these neighborhood changes.
I invented a process of printing the photographic image on clear film instead of paper, adding paint, collage or pastel behind the transparent film image. This enhances the dimensionality already inherent in the transparent positive film.
I incorporate some of these painted images into architectural framing like doors or mirrors. Desilvered mirrors add as well as block entry into these embedded images.