“We hold on to things that remind us of persons, places, events. It is an instinct beyond sentiment, something about a need to feel something will outlast the body, but also a kind of denial that the body will not last. These collections sit awkwardly between these two poles” -Ann Lauterbach

A few months ago, I contacted poet and teacher Ann Lauterbach after reading her poem,"Not that it could be finished" . I had become increasingly interested in people who collect things, as I myself, am a collector. I was also in transition from one apartment to another and was overwhelmed by the amount of “stuff” I had accumulated. I was even more overwhelmed by the fact that I could not get rid of any of it because of the sentimental value each thing possessed- however miniscule. My work as an artist is rooted by this very same predicament. Our world is constantly changing. In order to keep up with this change we must learn to abandon some traditions of the past and hold on to others. As new technological resources are increasingly becoming available, I find myself “collecting” skills in new media while still staying faithful to my traditional fine arts upbringing. Technology has allowed for the ability to manipulate my own personal past and present in ways that defy linear time. I can take an analog video of my dad in 1970 and composite it with a digital video of myself from 1999, suddenly we are in the same video, and we’re the same age. I am interested in the fine line between reality and the unknown and use new found technology to make the impossible, possible. Most of my work comes from a fear of an end, or from a need to make death okay. I will take a bunch of dead flowers, and create a vase to display them in. I find beauty in the decay and in the bittersweet. I create art to keep things alive. Memory is malleable, I may remember a memory from video or from audio, but sometimes those mediums do not do the experience justice alone. The event’s are recorded, but the feelings and emotions are unclear, they as of yet, cannot be contained. It is through multiple mediums that I am able to recreate or reinterpret the experience. At this point, the memory becomes something else. In an attempt to make sense of my past, I sometimes find myself in a bigger web then when I began, new memories emerge, contexts change, worlds collide. I feel that my art speaks to our inevitable end, and our collective need to piece together our lives.