Once Achieved, What is it Worth?
2011-2014
When I arrived at the University of Montana in 2011 for my graduate studies, I made the decision to invest my entire research and studio practice into issues pertaining to the contemporary and historical American West. In doing so, I abandoned the brightly colored aesthetic I had been employing as a means to satirically define the culture of this region in favor of a subdued and more honest aesthetic befitting the social conditions of the rural West. By removing the authoritative icons and imagery familiar to the West I was able to allow myself more room to create and re-contextualize the romanticisms associated with this region.
In this work, I utilized text, industrial materials, found objects, and other abandoned objects. These materials all had ties to the region, or in the myths associated with the region, but by stripping them from their known contexts, they began to take on new narratives and meaning, functioning as intellectual conduits into new understandings and interpretations of the myth.
My goal was to create works that subvert the romanticism and heroism that Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism portrayed, creating an American West that I understood to be true.
Driving for hours and not seeing a single town. The seething roast of summer when the grass turns brown and animal carcasses pepper the interstate. The physical and psychological absence of winter. Prairies populated by oil derricks and coal pits. Endless washes of yellow, brown, black and white. The smell of burnt coffee, cigarettes, beer, whiskey, sweat, diesel and manure. A land of abandonment where people, places and things are almost always forgotten as soon as they are replaced. A violent and brutal social construction.
