Post-Pandemic Experiments
For the last two decades I’d made artwork about being outside of my house, away someplace, often somewhere new or unfamiliar to me. “Public” was part of the requirement. It was never private, even when centered from my own experience.
The pandemic changed that by necessitating making work about place in different ways: I had not yet explored “place” and “public” via the web and social media, and had not recently examined my immediate environment. The video "Learning to Love the Apocalypse Now" combines representation of real domestic and physical environments with virtual spaces (footage stolen from social media)-- both actual and vicarious participation in important events of the day, sometimes while stuck in one’s room or in between dog walks. The comfort of my daily existence is referenced and challenged in relation to police protests, pandemic anxiety, death-- a kind of fear "public" and what goes on there.
Extending the idea of quarantine/remain in place, I’ve gathered materials from my immediate environment: the basement, the garden, the studio, as well as the virtual. Very old artworks, lying around, that seem to ask me when I’ll make new ones. There’s internet-based images from dreaming of going somewhere amidst the dog hair and coffee. But mostly there's grit, grime, inner thoughts, banality, and doing it all over again the next day.
