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.