Statement

Since the late 1990s, digital technologies have streamlined the production and delivery of visual information to such an extent that we now use images routinely as a means of everyday communication. These days, anyone with a camera can take a photograph and post it online for millions to see, all within a matter of seconds. Through our electronic devices, we have access to a constant stream of images from all parts of the globe, which brings with it a corresponding flattening of sensory input.

In my practice, I have responded to the ubiquity of digital images by engaging with them in a sculptural way. I typically begin with photographs I have taken, using image-editing software to overlay and stitch them together into composites containing multiple perspectives. These photomontages are then printed with pigment inks on archival paper, which become my raw materials for sculpting. When I cut and fold my prints into polyhedral grids, the images get fragmented and distorted, even as they take on new forms in three dimensions. These alterations express a tendency towards abstraction that grows naturally out of my background in particle physics. As a scientist, I think of digital images both holistically as pictures and analytically as information. After all, these images are simply strings of numbers on a hard drive that can be studied with the same computational techniques that are applied to scientific data. As an artist, however, not only do I manipulate images algorithmically with software, but also with manual interventions in physical space, using the language of geometric pattern as a personal lens for looking at my materials.

The sculptures that emerge from this process are interpretations of the images I began with, just as those images are interpretations of the objects they depict. To continue the cycle, I often take photographs of a finished sculpted print to use as a starting point for my next piece. Thus, any individual work, whether sculpture or photograph, is always embedded in a sequence of transformations where objects become images which become objects again, giving rise to a complex web of visual relationships. Through this iterative procedure, my practice continually crosses the boundary between two and three dimensions in an effort to sustain the immediacy of experience that is invariably lost whenever we attempt to dissect and circumscribe the world.

Biography

I was raised in North Haven, CT, and I live and work in Ithaca, NY. After obtaining undergraduate and graduate degrees in physics, I became a research associate at the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based Sciences and Education, where I am currently the IT Director. My artwork has been exhibited in numerous venues in the Finger Lakes region and beyond. Apart from scientific journals, my writing and artwork have appeared in Stone Canoe, Lunch Ticket, and Caldaria. I have previously served on the boards of The Upstairs Gallery and the Light in Winter Festival of Science and the Arts, and I am currently on the board of the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts.