Our culture is overwhelmed by imagery. Facebook hosts over 100,000,000,000 images (100 billion). If the old adage is true, then chances are you’ve seen thousands of photographs today, and tomorrow you’ll wake up and do the same over again. The fact is, images don’t have the same power today that they did 100 years ago. For example, when the an audience first saw the short film, “train coming into a station,” the crowd erupted with screams as people felt the sensation of danger as what appeared to be a real train came toward them onscreen. We laugh today at the thought of a medium so pervasive having the kind of emotional impact that it did when first invented. Our minds are so inundated by images that we can watch movie after movie, and not remember what we saw a few minutes ago.

As a photographer, filmmaker, and artist, I often feel as though the medium I work through is as flavorful as eating one last chip–after eating an entire bag already. Though the image may be thoughtful and emotionally compelling, the audience has likely consumed too much media to give more than a passing thought to another set of images, and the chance of having a real emotional impact is minute. And the fact is, I am more often the audience than the artist. I am far more likely to skim or scan a body of work that someone has put months of their life and countless hours of energy into than to take a few minutes and really take in the full magnitude of the art

While so much of what you will see in the next 24 hours will be visual garbage, remember to be aware. Be cognizant of the beauty around you. Take time to look at those photographs and images that are thoughtful and excellent. Visual art drives our cultural identity in so many ways. Don’t allow the overwhelming nature of the media to take the beauty of looking at a beautiful creation away from us.

My newest project on the distracting and dehumanizing nature of technology. Here’s a first draft of the artist statement:

Technology interferes with society. It distracts, diverts from, and substitutes for real experiences. We use cell phones, computers, televisions and other devices to connect with more and more people, yet somehow we remain lonelier than ever. People in U.S. are no happier than they have been in past years, despite the prevalence of Facebook, Twitter and texting to keep us in constant contact with the people in our lives. In this project, I take a critical look at the nature of our lives today. Filling every moment with the internet, social media, and communication, we forget that reality exists, and people need real interaction and real life in order to live.

I love the color gray. This quilt sums up my thoughts on the color. A study on the textures and shades that come from a single, subtle hue.

More work from the industrial food series I’m doing in my studio class.  This piece is heavily influenced by Russian Constructivist art from the 1920s, with its use of geometric shapes and diagonal lines, and the idea of the future being a mass-produced place, devoid of any sort of personality, where everything is the same.