Portfolio
Suspended Motion Series
Works in the Suspended Motion Series act as records of human movement, taking form as still images, videos, and interactive installations. Inspired in part by early image compositing techniques and the chronophotographic studies of Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, the work pursues my interest in depicting the body in motion in a way that cannot be perceived naturally and that expands our scope of visual reasoning. Like those late 19th c. technicians, as well as the Futurist artists of the early 20th century, I am inspired by new and accessible technologies that enable alternative presentations of human experience. Since 2013 I have developed four series of videos and prints that vary in style and execution, but all share these same aesthetic and conceptual themes. Included below are still images from each of the series, which were created by arranging selected sequences of video frames to suggest a record of performative movements.
Suspended Motion Series I: II, 14 x 24 inches, 2013
Suspended Motion Series I: I, 24 x 14 inches, 2013
Suspended Motion Series II: Scroll I, 24 x 144 inches, 2014
Suspended Motion Series II: Scroll II, 24 x 144 inches, 2014
Suspended Motion Series II: Pixelstick (Oakland), 12 x 24 inches, 2014
Suspended Motion Series III: I, 18 x 24 inches, 2014
Suspended Motion Series III: III, 18 x 24 inches, 2014
Suspended Motion Series IV: II, 24 x 18 inches, 2015
Suspended Motion Series IV: V, 24 x 72 inches, 2015
Suspended Motion Series IV: Scroll I, 84 x 88 inches, 2015
Digital Photo Collages
Collage has been a part of my artistic practice for a long time, and in the last few years I've refined my process with digital composition and focused on developing completely digital collages using a variety of sources. I combine my own photos and digital renderings from video with images scanned from vintage magazines or other found materials. I'm fascinated by media in all its forms, and interested in mashing up visual content in order to reform it into something that is more my own.
The first artwork below was commissioned by the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) and is planned for installation at the 19th Street BART station in Oakland, CA in 2018. Waxed for Dancing is a collaborative work created by myself and my spouse Hailey Payne Banks. It incorporates original photographs and illustrations of architectural elements and signage observed in Oakland's uptown neighborhood.
Waxed for Dancing, 115 x 115 inches, 2016
LA Live I, 40 x 40 inches, 2016
Untitled, 24 x 24 inches, 2016
Midnight Cowboy, 24 x 24 inches, 2016
Sweet Tooth, 24 x 24 inches, 2014
Rubberband Stacks, 24 x 18 inches, 2014
Videos
The first video below documents my 2014 MFA exhibition in the Digital Arts and New Media program at UCSC. I exhibited work from my Suspended Motion Series exploring the visualization of motion in the form of an interactive video installation as well as a series of prints. Suspended Motion Series III: Descending is the third video in a collection of work paying homage to early 20th century artists and technicians who, during a time of accelerated technological development, sought to represent movement in response to new understandings of human perception.
The below video is an excerpt from my first music video made using footage generated by the DepthKit video system as part of my Suspended Motion Series. I captured myself performing to Flume's Holdin' On and experimented in post-production with various camera angles and color effects. I used the frames from this video to create the Suspended Motion Series II prints and scrolls.
I developed and produced two videos in a new series entitled Introducing Formal Analysis for the J. Paul Getty Museum's Education department. The series adapts as its content some of the most frequently accessed curriculum on Getty.edu/Education, the Understanding Formal Analysis and Elements of Art instructional materials. Targeted towards grade 3-12 teachers and students, each video guides viewers through the process of formal analysis by contrasting and comparing two artworks related by genre. The key visual elements of the featured artwork examples are reinforced using terminology from the Elements of Art and Principles of Design curriculum. Ultimately viewers are given an opportunity to reflect on the historical contexts of the works, and prompted to consider themselves in the role of the artist.
One of the two pilot video series I was selected to develop and produce for the J. Paul Getty Museum's Education department, Getty in Studio intends to extend the impact of the on-site artist demonstration courses by translating that content into digital form for presentation on the web. The series sought to be truly artist-centered, featuring the artist in their studio as they illustrate their process of making by demonstrating a particular technique or practice. It was also an important goal for the department to connect contemporary practice with historical objects in the Getty’s collection. Los Angeles-based artist Sylvana Barrett made a natural choice for the series pilot as her practice is centered around traditional methods of painting and gilding. She works primarily with egg tempera paint, and has led a number of artist demonstration courses at the museum. Her work is an excellent example of an artist applying a contemporary approach to a traditional methodology.