photos
ft. wendy | garden state cancer center | traverse city state hospital
For me, photography is a means and not an end. These images are studies for paintings or documents of other artworks. I include them to shed light on my process and give a glimpse of what tickles my retina.
Ft. Wendy:
Ft. Wendy was a weekend-long retreat in Holt, Michigan, sponsored by the Outside Circle Collective. The event included original music, a group mural, and an outdoor film festival. These photos document some aspects of this inspiring weekend in August, 2003.
Traverse City State Hospital:
These photographs were taken in 1995, with Kate Firebaugh. They document the state of the abandoned asylum buildings before developers got interested. This series of photos has fueled numerous paintings, in terms of actual imagery and in terms of psychological associations. The fascinating collision of architectural styles, the colorful and tragic history, and the visually fascinating state of decay of the buildings launched me on a lifelong artistic investigation of mental illness as expressed through abandoned hospitals.
Garden State Cancer Center:
This abandoned hospital campus in Nutley, New Jersey, grabbed my imagination as I drove by it daily on my way to work in 2002. Its geometric grandeur, relative isolation from other structures, and lingering aura of suffering was compounded by the very apparent vacancy of nearby buildings almost overgrown with shrubs.