My work casts ordinary people as individuals whose retold stories grow larger than the people who lived them. The images I use are of people who by necessity lived their lives in two cultures: the dominant one and that shared by family and friends of color. What may be passed over by one culture as mundane may be a significant marker of status and meaning in the other. I believe telling someone's story elevates it to importance by the act of focusing the audience's attention upon it. My work strives to tell stories of these ordinary people as though they were icons of the dominant culture.
I see layers of memory and emotion within people like layers of an archaeological dig: compacted below the faces we know, supported and shaped by the strata of ancestors and experiences only half-remembered. But like ancient cities which survive into the modern era, fragments of these subsumed layers may still surface in daily life at unexpected moments.
Currently I use repurposed cigar boxes as my substrates because I am fascinated by their history of being used to hold personal treasures and secrets. They are like small caves: sheltering, intimate, yet potentially claustrophobic without a source of light. I house the stories I tell within my caves with layers of textured paper, color and vintage imagery.
