SUSPENDED ANIMATION
About the series:
Our ability to assess distance or proximity relies on depth perception, the capacity to view objects in three dimensions. In everyday, our very lives depend on this overlooked element of human vision; failure to assess and absorb different perspectives renders even the most mundane activities, like a highway commute to work, dangerously lethal. Each installation of Suspended Animation focuses on an encounter in everyday life, capturing in freeze-frame otherwise seemingly insignificant moments in time to enable an appreciation for the small details, the little things, the beauty of overlooked miracles that too often blend into our surroundings.
Some pieces in Suspended Animation feature a singular photograph as the work’s central element, using transparent media like glass, acrylic, or resin to magnify and illuminate the moment in question—giving viewers the chance to look again, this time, from new perspectives. Others use the momentary act of viewing as a meditative experiment. Here, I retain the series’ approach to transparency and media forms and extend the experience by supplementing collage techniques to enable sustained consideration of everyday life’s unrealized possibilities—a dazzling kaleidoscope of infinite variations.
Time constitutes the central conceptual element behind the series Suspended Animation, inviting the viewer to a shared moment of experiential pleasure and contemplation, and reminds us to stop and see differently. This work is difficult to classify, constituting both sculpture and mixed media, while simultaneously resisting any attempt at easy categorization. Truly a one-of-a-kind art object, Suspended Animation #12 will not be reproduced, nor will any other iterations in the Suspended Animation series.
Some pieces in Suspended Animation feature a singular photograph as the work’s central element, using transparent media like glass, acrylic, or resin to magnify and illuminate the moment in question—giving viewers the chance to look again, this time, from new perspectives. Others use the momentary act of viewing as a meditative experiment. Here, I retain the series’ approach to transparency and media forms and extend the experience by supplementing collage techniques to enable sustained consideration of everyday life’s unrealized possibilities—a dazzling kaleidoscope of infinite variations.
Time constitutes the central conceptual element behind the series Suspended Animation, inviting the viewer to a shared moment of experiential pleasure and contemplation, and reminds us to stop and see differently. This work is difficult to classify, constituting both sculpture and mixed media, while simultaneously resisting any attempt at easy categorization. Truly a one-of-a-kind art object, Suspended Animation #12 will not be reproduced, nor will any other iterations in the Suspended Animation series.
Suspended Animation #1 - Hurricane Canopy
7" x 7" x 3.5" | acrylic, photography, plexiglass, resin, collage, wire | 2020
Suspended Animation #1 - Hurricane Canopy is not yet publicly listed for purchase, but will be soon. Check back, or send an email to buy directly from the artist.
Suspended Animation #2 - Hypnosis
7" x 7" x 3.5" | acrylic, photography, plexiglass, resin, collage, wire | 2018
Suspended Animation #2 - Hypnosis highlights the surreal, hypnotic impact of a single barbed wire spiral outside an abandoned church in downtown Atlanta. The earthen tones of nearby concrete and dark maroon bricks on nearby buildings act as a veil; only by pausing to absorb the environment will a viewer of this desolate, abandoned cityscape have the chance to discover that hiding behind the drab refuse is a gleaming, metallic spiral of wire—illuminating and transforming, in the most subtle ways, even the starkest conditions in which we find ourselves.
Suspended Animation #3 - Ride the Spiral
12" x 12" x 1" | acrylic, metal, photography, plexiglass, resin, iron | 2018
Suspended Animation #3 - Ride the Spiral is not yet publicly listed for purchase, but will be soon. Check back, or send an email to buy directly from the artist.
Suspended Animation #4 - Labyrinth
7" x 7" x 3.5" | acrylic, photography, paper, plexiglass, resin | 2018
Suspended Animation #4 - Labyrinth highlights the surreal, hypnotic impact of a single barbed wire spiral outside an abandoned church in downtown Atlanta. The earthen tones of nearby concrete and dark maroon bricks on nearby buildings act as a veil; only by pausing to absorb the environment will a viewer of this desolate, abandoned cityscape have the chance to discover that hiding behind the drab refuse is a gleaming, metallic spiral of wire—illuminating and transforming, in the most subtle ways, even the starkest conditions in which we find ourselves.
Suspended Animation #5 - Fence Me In
12" x 12" x 1" | acrylic, metal, photography, collage, paper, plexiglass, resin, iron | 2019
Suspended Animation #5 - Fence Me In is not yet publicly listed for purchase. Check back, or send an email to buy directly from the artist.
Suspended Animation #6 - Jacob's Ladder [There Is Life]
12" x 12" x 1" | acrylic, photography, paper, plexiglass, resin, collage | 2021
Suspended Animation #6 - Jacob's Ladder [There Is Life] takes up the split-second experience of noticing the presence of beautiful, verdant green leaves vividly alive in the middle of urban life’s concrete jungle. This iteration of the Suspended Animation series extends that momentary observation and draws on a new photographic method consciously intended to remind myself: see differently. If you’re lost, rediscover your way by turning the world upside down. Don’t ever forget to look up. Created from a singular static photo, Suspended Animation #6 employs a collage technique intended to create the sensation of a diamond for the viewer’s eye, a subtle suggestion of the invaluable jewel that is the simultaneous fragility and tenacity of survival and flourishing in the harshest of circumstances.
Suspended Animation #7 - Hyperfocus
12" x 12" x 1" | acrylic, photography, paper, metal, plexiglass, resin, metal | 2018
Suspended Animation #7 - Hyperfocus is not yet publicly listed for purchase, but will be soon. Check back, or send an email to buy directly from the artist.
Suspended Animation #8 - Mother of Sorrow
12" x 12" x 1" | acrylic, photography, paper, plexiglass, resin | 2021
Suspended Animation #8 - Mother of Sorrow is not yet publicly listed for purchase. Check back, or send an email to buy directly from the artist.
Suspended Animation #9 - Bend the Arc
7" x 7" x 3.5" | acrylic, photography, plexiglass, resin, paper | 2018
Suspended Animation #9 - Bend the Arc highlights the surreal, hypnotic impact of a single barbed wire spiral outside an abandoned church in downtown Atlanta. A sense of movement punctuates the image, as the wire’s graceful curve captures the viewer’s eye, a flash of silver rising from monochromatic, dusty surroundings. I chose to create an installment for the Suspended Animation series based on this photograph’s subtle suggestions of time and change, of hope and the possibility of transcendence—the wire’s gleaming, defiant path to the sky called to mind Martin Luther King’s famous words about the “arc of the moral universe,” a reminder to take a long view in the face of insurmountable obstacles. The earthen tones of nearby concrete and dark maroon bricks on nearby buildings act as a veil; only by pausing to absorb the environment in full do punctuations of color catch the eye. Inviting the viewer to pause and take in the moment, this series calls attention to gleaming, metallic spirals of wire hiding behind the drab refuse of an urban cityscape—illuminating transforming, in the most subtle ways, even the starkest conditions in which we find ourselves.
Suspended Animation #10 - Diamond [The Rough]
7" x 10" x 4" | acrylic, photography, aluminum, plexiglass, resin, | 2019
Suspended Animation #11 - Goodbye, Blue Sky
7" x 7" x 3.5" | acrylic, photography, plexiglass, resin, paper | 2022
Suspended Animation #11 - Goodbye, Blue Sky is not yet publicly listed for purchase. Check back, or send an email to buy directly from the artist.
Suspended Animation #12 - Paradise's Prey
7" x 7" x 3.5" | acrylic, photography, plexiglass, resin, paper | 2022
Although all artworks I create hold a special place in my heart, Suspended Animation #12 - Paradise's Prey will be extremely difficult to part with, so dearly do I cherish the memory around this work’s creation and meaning. captures the melancholy sensation of time’s passage as seasons change, and the natural order of life’s cycle turn vibrant life into wilting death—with promises of return for the patient. I took the photograph from which this piece’s collage draws (a single bird of paradise) by the side of a Los Angeles freeway, where the changing of seasons seems incomprehensible and invisible, save the minute signs of dying plants so often overlooked as we speed past life on the unforgiving concrete highways. Where vibrant colors and hopeful life threaten to fall away – often without our notice, Suspended Animation #12 instead presents the viewer with an escape into memory: stretching the fading colors of overlooked beauty amidst harsh concrete landscapes into the kaleidoscopic infinite of what will—inevitably, if eventually—return.
Suspended Animation #13 - Expansion
12" x 12" x 1" | acrylic, photography, plexiglass, resin, paper | 2022
Suspended Animation #13 - Expansion uses the momentary act of viewing as a meditative experiment. Here, I retain the series’ approach to transparency and media forms and extend the experience by supplementing collage techniques to enable sustained consideration of everyday life’s unrealized possibilities—a dazzling kaleidoscope of infinite variations. Suspended Animation #13 captures the melancholy sensation of time’s passage as autumn turns to winter. I took the photograph from which this piece’s collage draws (the remains of green leaves against masses of yellow and gold against a gray sky) in a small village located in rural upstate New York, where the changing of seasons disproportionately vivid, all-encompassing, inescapable, and often overwhelming. Where green leaves threaten to fall away, Suspended Animation #13 instead presents the viewer with an escape in memory: stretching the fading colors of a fall landscape into the kaleidoscopic infinite of what will—inevitably, if eventually—return.
RETURN TO ART & PHOTOGRAPHY.