Artist Statement
“Stealing from one is plagiarism; stealing from many is research.” A century has passed since legendary screenwriter Wilson Mizner glibly voiced this now-famous remark. His words resonate in an even greater way today.

Most everyone will agree that research and influence are synonymous with creation. However, if this is so, all methods of making artwork are, at the very least, a highly diluted form of appropriation. This hypothesis is more frequently becoming reality. What is true originality? Does true originality exist? Mass communication and globalized networks strain to connect every image, sentence, and sound to one another. As this occurs, the amount of appropriated material increases at an exponential rate. The resulting tug-of-war between mediated generations of information spotlights our current disposable definition of originality.

The development of my work began many years ago primarily as a chronicle of personal experience. This is visually represented through hundreds of self-generated or found pieces of tangible information. All of which, are compulsively accumulated and saved for their conceptual potential. These fragments are combined with additional mixed media imagery. Ultimately, this working process is advanced into a perpetual cycle of recontextualization where self-appropriation becomes the constant creative component.

Within this process, the hypocrisy and contradiction of my actions and words, as well as those of contemporary culture, operate as the primary subject matter. First, the viewer is seduced by a colorful exterior, then transposed by the hidden agenda of the non sequitur. Consequently, multiple narratives are presented through the power of suggestion. Therefore allowing subsequent thoughts and interpretations to become self-fulfilling prophecies.