The Portrait Project is an ongoing social interaction (since 2005) where the “client” becomes the “artist”. Seemingly set  up as a caricature busker’s stand,  passersby are solicited not to have their portraits drawn, but instead to create a portrait of the artist. I purchase all the portraits for the same amount regardless of the time spent or the quality of the results, they become mine to exhibit and use –generating questions of ownership and originality, trade, compensation and fairness. Am I, as a trained artist encouraging creativity in others or merely exploiting the naive? This piece further expands and continues my search for the locus of  art. Is art originated in the act of creating a situation, in the resultant work or in some other shifting loci?

Jenga, archival digital print from the series Frontiers in collaboration with Luther Thie

New Frontier and Private Property, archival digital prints from Frontiers  with Luther Thie. A selection images depicting Merced and Malibu, two distinct communities in California, one reeling from the miscalculations of market speculation, the other struggling with the effects of climate change-read a little more about this series ‘here‘

Cultural fluidity today is taken for granted; we are steeped in the flotsam and jetsam of the “global village” and however manifested, these adaptations are part of an evolution in our thought and daily life. Besides exploring the melding and appropriation of the surface trappings of “exotic” cultures or religions these images celebrate unexpected manifestations of the divine in everyday life and situations. The photos are inspired in part by the discovery of Prada yoga mats, the numerous social implications thereof, and a … Read More »