Following a year of dramatic change, I found myself writing a book that was not only a philosophical examination of life, but a call to take charge of it through what I call Creative Self Expression.

As a visual artist, curator and someone who's nurtured and supported the work of other creatives, I discovered that I could continue to encourge creativity, and possibly reach more people by writing a guidebook that addressed many of the roadblocks that prevent us from expressing ourselves in our true, creative nature.  This is my first book and, like myself, it is not easy to categorize.  On its surface, it is about self discovery and I found that this path of discovery led to spirituality, which in turn led back to creativity. Ultimately, it is about harnessing the creative spark that I believe we all possess and encouraging the reader to share with the world their creative viewpoint.

Toxic Rainbows: Surviving and Thriving in the New Babylon was completed in the fall of 2018 and is now available as an e-book and in paperback.

These composite works aim to illustrate the idea of artificiality in the world around us and our immersion into a digital lifestyle.  These images convey the sense that we are morphing into a digital product as much as we are flesh and blood. The work mimicks the idea of how we choose to seemlessly blend into illusory worlds and present ourselves on social media to create a perception that is meant to represent how life is for us, when in reality, it takes us further away from our true self and the source of our creativity.

Through the use of photo apps and specialty filters aimed at being used with social media, we incorporate digital elements onto our images, such as a change of hair, eye color, additions of animal whiskers, cute noses and emoji characteristics, essentially digitizing ourselves far beyond the untouched digital image of our 'plain' selves.  Digital facelifts, airbrushing and tweaking of our images has become an essential part of the photo posting process and with each digital addition, we experience a loss of our natural selves.

The purpose of using exceedingly familiar locations for my self-portraits is multi-fold. These are the places that often entice us, they rely on repetition, sensory stimulation and artificiality to attract our attention. And most importantly, they are the places we feel comfortable in. They are mudane and common to us, they are places we know intimately and can almost blend into. Perhaps this is similar to ideas expressed in works by other artists such as Andy Warhol or Andreas Gursky.

These locations are visual metaphors that reminds us that we are slipping further away from nature and appear to be evolving toward and embracing artificiality.   As a child of Generation X, I think often of life pre- and post-internet and this work expresses some of my feelings about the radically different time periods.  I address my own participation and entry into these surroundings as well as the discomfort that it creates within me.

These simple animations allow us a glimpse into our morphing online identities and how our immersion in social media and obsessive nature begins to blur the lines of reality. My message is to find a way to create balance, truly connect and give back to the world through our individual unique creative expression.

By animating my self-portraits, I can create other formats of digital communication and understanding that is perceived differently on the various social media platforms. These portraits taken in grocery stores and places familiar to all of us has become a way for me to convey this feeling of separation from nature, our increasing reliance on the artificial and disconnection from self. The repetitive and colorful backgrounds reminds us of how we are melding into these unnatural settings as if we've become part of a screensaver on a computer and that we are simply walking through a digital background in a video landscape.

My meme project is like an advertising campaign to supplement ideas associated with creative and personal growth that are too often pushed aside or uncomfortable to address. Utilizing photography and a simple line of my own text creates attachments to the viewer’s consciousness in more ways than simply trying to convey an idea by explanation

In our changing digital culture and in an increased climate where free speech is sometimes oppressed, we have begun to modify our behavior by practicing self censorship and altering our opinions to maintain calm around us. We have also resorted to other forms of communications, such as the powerful meme. A powerful modern form of digital communication. 

Through these memes, I aim to inspire creativity and also to address topics of communication breakdown and other concepts which are deeply associated with our post-internet lives. The somewhat refined meme style was created to be used online, on social media, to be shared, liked, reposted and/or projected.   In using this format, my potential audience became unlimited and anyone with a computer or smart phone could be exposed to my ideas and communications.

The washed-out look and almost fading into the background symbolizes our obsession with digital culture and the blurring of reality and make believe that has become part of everyday life.

This project consists of  zines that I designed and produced in recent years. The content is steeped in theories of past forms of marketing communication and is a continuation of my exploration of consumption and distraction, something I also address in my Photo Memes seen in other projects.  As in my other work, here I am also interested in exploring pre- and post-internet forms of communication and how through perception and 'glamouring' we were sold on ideas and lifestyles.  In these works, my focus has been predominantly associated with gay culture and food products.

In these zines, I incorporate vintage papers and use repetition as seen in my previous works as well as offer reminders of how we are consumers at heart and how we are more than willing to be sold on an idea. The inclusion of the printed works here is meant to show a thread of thought that has been somewhat constant in my work and one that has evolved over time.

My decades long obsession with pop culture, ephemera and printed materials has gone from one form of inspiration to another. As a graphic designer it informed me and served as reference material, in recent years it has reminded me of how we are consumers,  how we long for new toys and shiny new acquisitions only to dispose of them for the next distraction.

Printed  materials, pop magazines, catalogues, and vintage advertisments and the like may once have held a nostalgic hold over me and inspired design ideas, but now it all serves as fodder, color blocks and a reminder that it's all temporary and somewhat meaningless and better served by subverting its original intent and mining the disposable for something more meaningful. 

These works are all made by hand with vintage papers and convey ideas both obvious and buried within their layers.

My portrait work with the Polaroid spanned many years and consists of 1,000s of images.  This project came to a halt with the discontinuation of Polaroid Spectra film around 2012.  At it's heart it is a documentation and celebration of the individual as much as my love for cinema.  The instant film format was perfectly suited to capturing individuals in cinematic composition, as creating a film still out of a moment from their lives.

There was equalizing power in the creation of these portraits, created by placing each person on a pedestal of imagination.  With many of my photos, I believe I captured that unique essence and spark that is the great contributor that plays to our individual strengths.

Identity and perception played a great part in the development  of this huge body of work and is a theme I continue working with today.