march 10, 2019

I can't speak to anyone's identity but my own. My identity is informed by ongoing experiences and education, conversations, choices I've made, and choices made for me. I express identity through the work I do, the way in which I carry myself, and how I interact with others.

The photo below is the most straight-forward way I felt I could represent myself visually. Installed at Mount Royal University is my life-sized self-portrait with fogged glass, as part of a group exhibition on indentity. The things that inform who I am aren’t all visible, and aren’t always visible to me. My hope is that people stop to look at the work and let the factors that inform their identity interact with this piece and the others in the show. It’s up now and until January 2020. After that its home is to be determined. Currently taking suggestions on what to do with a true-to-life photo of myself that’s difficult to transport.

Thanks to MRU, and curator Curtis Desiatnyk, for letting me do my thing.

january 6, 2019

The technical, aesthetic, and personal aspects of taking and editing self portraits for a new project, has been an exercise in patience and humility. A friend of mine and I were sharing time and critiquing recent photos of ourselves. Most of the criticism came down to what we saw of ourselves in the images. She stopped me mid-sentence and said, “no, we’re going to stop doing this. I want to age gracefully.” I reflected on this for the better part of the last week. So often we mourn what we believe to be lost. We reflect on the present by analyzing the past as a space where we’ve lost time, youth, opportunities, and people. In doing this, we lose the importance in what we’ve experienced in that same space. For the vision I’ve lost, I’ve seen things I couldn’t have comprehended when my vision was 20/20. My body aches because it has carried me through the good and bad, and has brought me to where I am. My skin has changed, because I’m changing. Sometimes I can’t remember names, dates, and details, but I’m constantly learning, experiencing, and gaining perspective. I’m aging, and there’s value in that.