As the last few months of college drew to a close, I suddenly realized that I would soon have to work for a living.  A lot of my friends had spent the entire four years devising a plan as to how they might "make it" after school.  Some of my friends had more "reasonable" majors, like graphic design or had gotten their teaching certificate.  Others had large amounts of inheritance money to rely on.  My plan?  Make art and travel the world.  How?  Not real sure, but I'm sure I'll figure something out? I eventually landed on the idea that I would teach English abroad, and concentrate on my photography in my spare time.  I saved my money, sold my...

Winter has definitely arrived in Denver. As I am writing this, it is  eighteen degrees out and the snow has not stopped since six am.  My next festival is still months away. The guys who cut the metal backing for my sculptures are in the process of relocating their shop, which has put much of my sculptural work on hold for the time being.  What's an artist to do?  This artist buys flowers.  I have had a soft spot for flowers for as long as I can remember.  Back in my early college days, one of my favorite photographers was Imogen Cunningham.  Favorite painter?  Georgia O'Keeffe. In the past whenever I've photographed flowers, I have resorted to the longest lens,...

  I continued working on this series throughout my Junior and Senior year of college.  My Junior Seminar teacher loved it, and I loved her.  She had the ability to nudge you in the right direction, without ever explicitly telling you which direction that was.  My Senior thesis teacher disliked the series, just as much as I disliked her.  At each critique, when I'd put the new work up, she'd ask, "Do you have to use landscape photographs? Can't you use a less trite reference? Like fences?" I stood by my work, each and every time she said this.  The summer before I started this series, was the summer that the Hayman Fire burned in Colorado.  I watched it burn...

Faith.  One conjures the image of the devout kneeling in church, praying to God.  I've been thinking about faith a lot lately, but not in those terms.  Faith can just be the unwavering belief in something.  Something bigger than yourself.  An unwavering trust in something.  Art requires faith.  For the last few months, I've been feeling a bit "stuck" in the creative cycle.  Still plugging away at a few photo sculptures, I've been itching to move onto something else.  But what?  And the fear slowly starts to creep in.  What if this is it?  What if I never have any more good ideas?  And then the self doubt.  What if I'm not actually good?  What if I never end up...

I am a firm believer that in the process of making art, that most of the time you have no idea what you are doing.  It's only after making enough art, and enough looking, and enough questioning, that you really begin to understand what's happening. As I began to work on this series, it became clear that a beautiful landscape was not enough, nor was a beautiful flame.  The two had to interact with each other in a way that made sense.  This involve a lot of planning, but most times, planning ended up being pointless, as fire is impossible to control.  I had attempted to control the burn by putting an accelerator on parts of the photograph that I...