Interview by Anna Jacobson

You have quite good control of the reactions between the photographic chemicals, light, watercolors and photographic paper to create these portraits and narratives. How long have you been working with a “chemigram” process? Would you describe these works as chemigrams?

They are made by painting on photographic sheet film with watercolor, bleach and developer. The bleach bores holes through the emulsion, exposing the transparent substrate underneath. The pieces are then photographed over mirrors while the chemistry is still wet and swirling chaotically

over the surface. The final images that you see are photographs of the film emulsion in this active, energetic state. They’re related to chemigrams in that they emphasize mark-making on emulsion but differ because they don’t employ resist techniques and they aren’t processed with fixer for permanence.

The work appears very painterly. You even won the Pollock-Krasner Grant. What is your relationship with the medium of painting?

I grew up in a family of painters and spent a lot of time with my mom, grandmother and grandfather in their studios as a young child through to my teenage years. So painting was always just a part of life. I became enamored with the photographic medium early on and it feels natural to mix the two together.

White Sands, pigment print, 25x20 inches

Bruce Silverstein Gallery described your works as existing “in a state of timed decline”. I feel like this could refer to many things. What does it mean to you and your work?

Many of my works capture a fleeting materiality. It’s most apparent in the painted/bleached pieces on film emulsion and in the sculptural works I’ve made with static electricity and film cut-ups. I photograph the pieces as they build up and ultimately fall apart or disappear.

Event Horizon, pigment print, 20x16 inches

Was there a predetermined narrative you were working with when creating this work? Or did it develop over time?

The subjects range from fictionalized science and space scenes to people and places I’ve known to evolving landscapes and biological forms. I was drawn to work with film emulsion because it takes on a bruised coloring and it scratches and scars easily. I wanted to make something that reflects the strangeness, fear, uncertainty and shock that goes along with living in an increasingly dematerialized and fragmented society. The colors are bruisey and are also associated with mourning (black, grey, purple). The intense watercolor pigments add in the shock and adrenaline.