autobiography

Growing up I was fascinated with everyone’s culture but my own. Every time I had saved enough money, I would blow it traveling. I went to Mexico with a Spanish class. I backpacked Europe during summer vacations. Each time I would have given anything to not be another American tourist. In college I took cultural theory seminars. Sometimes I had to hang my head and shut my mouth, but I wanted to have these conversations, to try to understand difference. I began making art to find beauty in what I thought to be a pretty boring life. Street photographers found wonder in the ordinary moments of daily life. Modernist architects and sculptors found beauty in space, light and raw materials. Although critical of their goals for objectivity, these desires are still close to my heart.

After graduating college, my friends and I began the humbling process of finding a job. I had been told how fortunate I was being an educated, white male, but now it would seem this privilege had betrayed me. I was fortunate enough to get a job at a diner across from the university. Former professors would come in and once again I would hang my head and shut my mouth. I daydreamed a lot. I have this fantasy of waking up to find that I am the last person on Earth. I don’t know what has happened, or why everyone is gone. I may be at home or in a foreign city or on an undiscovered island. The spaces in my photographs are absent of people, I choose built environments that are common, but lack diversity. The New Topographic movement photographed these kinds of places and criticized how our culture has altered our landscapes. Environmental writers, like Barry Lopez, Robinson Jeffers, and Gary Snyder echoed these concerns. My images of empty, urban spaces became metaphors for emotional landscapes. I left the diner to work for a glass mosaic studio. It was a big improvement, but more than anything I wanted to get out of town.

I started teaching in Shanghai. I was no stranger to travel but as routine set in, I felt homesick for the first time. In that situation you make friends so quickly you don’t even notice, until someone surprises you. As these surprises revealed themselves, I often found myself thinking, “How did we get so close? We have nothing in common.” But we did. We were on this deserted island for a reason and it was by choice! We chose to leave behind loved ones, homes, personal belongings, pets. I think most of us had felt alone long before coming here. During Mao’s regime, critical artwork was censored or destroyed. Some artists, through public performances, used temporary unified actions to protest oppressive regimes. They built a community based on free expression. Mark Dion worked with London students and retirees to relearn the history of the river Thames by excavating garbage. These projects built new communities out of a common need or desire.

I was brought up to believe that I had traded in my culture for privilege, or that someone had done that for me at birth. But we are fooled to believe that our culture is in our skin, blood and possessions, and it can then be used to exclude others. I admire the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Alfredo Jarr, and Jim Campbell, who use light, space and ordinary objects for social and personal commentary. I believe in the power of beauty, virtue, and quiet resistance. I value civility, charity, empathy, and fidelity and I ask that my audience value these as well. If so they may come to understand my work as they would a deserted island, slowly and carefully, with curiosity, feeling their body in space and the light moving across them both.