I am drawn to spaces that compose the backdrop of day-to-day life, but which may also act as fonts for curiosity, inquiry, and reflection; I have sought and continue to seek, through photography, a clear perspective of the world before me. Further, I wish to investigate the means by which we understand and learn, described by educational philosophies both past and current. At present, I am engaging with art meant to be engaged by the viewer as I contend that the experiential and the aesthetic are synonymous with learning and self-actualization.

I regularly consider:

What are the spaces where we connect to others and tap into ourselves?

What are the ways that we arrive at understanding?

Do our schools serve us completely and if not, why?

What does a fulfilled education look and feel like?

Can we see what is here and what is next?

My concern has been a revivified sense of my own surroundings, being the typical environs of a modern, imperfect society.  This more heightened awareness is built upon objective views of architectural space, notations of a fraught-yet-precious interrelationship with nature, and variable considerations of the ordinary.

        We can all, I believe, revel in the strangeness of this place we exist in together. Perhaps, common cause can be found in watching the world and wanting to know it: an antecedent, even, to committed action as well as individual accord.

It is common for attention to become inordinately channeled by tasks and goals aiming one toward future points in time. The passage of a day, then, may take one by compelling surroundings which go unacknowledged: their presence is too fleeting or they are so familiar they become invisible. Encouraged by the possibility that the present may, in fact, hold a richness comparable to anticipated realities, I have observed aspects of my own home and the surroundings of my commute to school.

The suburbs are dull and they are where I grew up. I remember, in youth, feeling numbed by channels of housing developments, masses of stores, and encroached-upon natural areas. Back then I would have liked to be somewhere else - somewhere more exciting, more genuine, more fulfilling. Eventually, I did just this - I traveled and got to know a bit of elsewhere. After returning to my suburban home, however, I didn’t see quite the same place. There is discernible, now, a special quality to these anonymous buildings and mall strips, a formal intrigue and essential curiosity.

Starkly perceived, this odd settlement -suburbia- built on top of and amidst nature, constructed in a sporadic, piecemeal fashion, is simplified into building blocks and inadvertent patterns. From nearly nothing there can emerge a particular something: a banal spectacle, a transcendence of the mundane.

Derived from the physical sites themselves and their simple coexistence together is a degree of familiar peculiarity, the development of which is revelatory: this place, suburbia, in its plainness, boringness, incidental makeup, and artless management, is a singular locale and a locus of subtle fascination.

It’s hard to say if in my youth I would have had the patience to put my home under the lens and revel in the instances of found, contextual interest at hand, but the opportunity alone would have been welcomed. It is no predicament isolated to a single person or location or time in life, this state of finding your place of living unengaging or undernourishing. We could all, I imagine, use some reassurance that our home is intrinsically more than it seems. Maybe you’ll have to take a long, hard look but within the walls of the typical, unassuming dwelling there is a new place residing amidst the old.

A lamppost is a simple thing: a bright light raised alongside sidewalks and roadways, illuminating the paths we take in our travels to and from home. Simultaneously, these objects are like silent guardians, protecting communities from the hazards of dimmed passages and waylaid orientation. They are sentinels, steadfastly lighting our possible routes. Because of their presence we may explore the shadows, safe in the knowledge that such territory has finite borders. If ever times become more grave and the night especially long they keep us vigilant of our familiar surroundings, offering a beacon forward.

Neighborhood, 2017