The Bathroom Project, 2009

While I was attending RISD in 2008-09, I had the opportunity to take one studio art class.  That's it.  It was unfortunate to be at one of the best art schools in the country, and not be making much art, or learning much from the other artists there.  But anyway, I took one class during the 5 week winter semester, called Breaking Boundaries: Interdisciplinary Printmaking.  It was great.  I learned a lot that I didn't know about the basics of printmaking, and I produced one main project after experimenting with a bunch of techniques. 

Thanks to all of you who responded to my emails and gave me wonderful words to work with.  You will recognize some of them here. 

Artist Statement:

I make work that has to do with intimacy: intimacy with self, with space, with others and with memory.  I find that what interests me the most about the idea of intimacy is our often silent, varied reactions to common experiences or locations.  In the everyday there is so much space for reflection and personality, and there is so much that we don’t say.  In an image of the common, there is so much room for new ideas, understandings and sympathies.  In most of my work, there is a blatant absence of a human image.  I find that if human presence is implied but not specifically stated, the viewer can relate more directly to the image. It is important to me that I leave some narrative space open for the viewer’s interpretation, but the images and text I choose are not void of intention or viewpoint. 

These prints include text from 10 different people including myself.   I asked for reactions and memories to the series of pictures.  The responses vary but immediately get at the strange and strong relationships we have with the spaces shown.  I normally work in clay, and this piece does include porcelain tiles, but the images and text are clearly reproduced and printed.  I think that printing takes the photos one step awayfrom a specific and defined place, and takes the text a step away from a specific, individual author. And hopefully it also takes them toward a more general, common, applicable and transferable understanding.