My work and where it comes from.

After reading Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life I question whether any expression of self is more or less authentic than another. Who am I when performing my idealized self (in the “living room”)? Do I act out how I assume I am perceived or in opposition to it? Do my fronts of race, class, gender, etc. say something inherent about me or about the audience’s expectations of me? If my audience is equally distracted by these questions can we ever have a mutual conversation? My work isn’t literal. It (maybe) doesn’t disclose my personal fronts, and it might seem that I am removing all personal information from it. But my goal is to find presence in absence. I believe that there are more basic human fears and desires that show through my work. It’s a way to better express feelings that I have been unable to do with words, an effort at being open and intimate with a stranger. And my ultimate hope is that we might shed our fronts of difference, become permeable for a moment, and have a slight glimpse of what it’s like to be someone else. My work is a conversation on the porch late at night, after a rough week and few drinks.