Artist Statement
My photographic subject matter in the Assemblages, the Drawings and the Book evolved from biological specimens to domestic artifacts. The old balloons, wire pieces, or earplugs look like the specimens of a museum, possessing the same strange qualities whose former purpose is only vaguely evident.
In the Constructions, the work, like pinned insects, is positioned for examination. The tools dissect, scrutinize, or pull apart while also mimicking legs or bodies. The contradiction of both destroying and creating is at the heart of the work.
The Prosthesis project continues my interest in perceiving the body through the tools we create. I have photographed prosthetic and orthotic devices at various stages of completion. The Ambivalence images represent in an abstract way my own experiences with loss and growth both physical and emotional.
After working with prosthetics I wanted to investigate the process of creating them in countries with unexploded ordinance and landmine issues. Place documents medical facilities and rehabilitation centers in Thailand, Cambodia and Lao, as a way to bring to our attention the need for these clinics in parts of the world continually affected by these lingering weapons.
Making Devices is a web book that shares interviews of patients and prosthetists working in the field, and anthropologists researching prosthetics. It is a way to add the voices of those whose experiences the photographs represent.
This body of work has depended on the generosity of Cambodia Trust's Cambodian School of Prosthetics and Orthotics (CSPO) in Phnom Penh; the Cooperative Orthotic & Prosthetic Enterprise (COPE), National Rehabilitation Centre, in Vientiane, Lao; The Prostheses Foundation of H.R.H. the Princess Mother in Chiang Mai, Thailand; Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, Cambodia; Handicap International Belgium Rehabilitation Centre in Siem Reap, Cambodia; and the University of Washington Medical Center's Department of Rehabilitation Prosthetic/Orthotic Clinic.
The series called Castings are drawings and black and white photographs inspired by what I have witnessed. I make casts of my own hands and feet, as well as other abstracted forms and manipulate them in ways similar to the process of making prosthetics. The drawings and photographs of plaster hands, feet, a pear, a toothpaste tube, wrapped fish, and other domestic objects, are a reflection on our physicality and its relationship with the objects we touch; that surround us.