Fine art: material and idea shape each other
My studio practice is a back-and-forth between material and idea.
Working with a material opens up possibilities. Those possibilities shape the idea, and the idea leads me back into the material to experiment again. Through these cycles of making and discovery I look for connections to human experience, and each connection changes how I understand the work and what I try next: a brushstroke on rice paper, an image moving across it, a warm print in your hand.
Ink, rice paper and video
In 2019 and 2020 much of the work was sumi ink on rice paper, shown as mixed media together with live video. The brush doesn’t forgive hesitation, and the ink doesn’t wait for certainty.
More than one person has compared this work to William S. Burroughs: not the content, but the relationship to language and to the mark, and the meeting point between intention and accident. I took that as a direction rather than a comparison. Alongside the ink, I work in acrylic and other mixed media.
Thermal printed photography
The newest work is live thermal printed photography. I photograph everyone and everything in my life the way I did with film growing up in the darkrooms around Pittsburgh: black and white, printed on the spot, something you can hold.
At Thermal Memories, from 2 to 13 October 2026, I photographed hundreds of visitors. Their portraits filled two walls that kept changing and a hanging sculpture, and went into the new Thermal Memories book, so people could see themselves in the larger whole.
Influences
Yves Klein, for the way he made absence into presence and turned a colour into a philosophy. Paul Reps, Bob Dylan and Jack Kerouac.
Exhibitions and residencies
- 2026Thermal Memories, solo and book launch · Frida Bobby Galerie, Berlin
- 2025Gallery Art Nova, group · Berlin · six of seven works sold
- 2023Lines of Impressions, solo, 52 works with live music · Oak and Ice, Berlin
- 2021Impressions of Now, solo, at the end of a residency · Château Orquevaux, France
- 2021PB and Jam, Berlin · Tokyo · Metaverse: an international group show of 75 artists, which I coordinated and selected, with a 12-piece band and projection art
- 2021Venice Art Crawl, live painting projected on a building · Venice Beach
- 2021Manos Gallery, group · Tarentum, Pennsylvania
- 2020Carbon Connection, solo · The Soap Gallery, Youngstown, Ohio
- 2019Fashion Institute of Technology, juried group, photographs from the Tree of Life Arts+Healing project · New York
- 2008–23Dance photography, 15-year exhibition · Point Park University Dance Complex, Pittsburgh
Residencies: Château Orquevaux, France, 2021. Selected for The Haven Residency, Gabriola Arts Council, British Columbia, in 2020, which was postponed because of COVID.
For exhibitions, collaborations or commissions, get in touch.