The Pale of Birds

The majority of my images in this show are the end result of  a long fascination I've had with Utah's Great Salt Lake. Some of my earliest memories are from there, I was a child when the state trucked in white sand to create a beach. As a recent transplant from Los Angeles it was familiar. Over the years I have returned to the beach often. In my twenties I would go there at night and sit on the picnic benches and listen to the wind and the gulls and the water. As the water has receded and the beach has given up to entropy, I have walked between the exposed beams of the old Saltair, followed the decayed wooden pipeline that runs from the bird refuge to antelope island,  discovered derelict cars, ubiquitous shotgun shells, and the dried corpses of birds.
For years I photographed these little bodies. Imagining an arcane language in the twisted poses of decay. Over time I gave up trying to decipher them, and now just accept that they are there.  Feathers, bones and sometimes flesh.
The work in this show begins with a photograph printed on rice paper. Layers of beeswax, pigments and inks create textures over the embedded images. The end result is a re-imagining of the bones underneath.
These images are a simultaneous embrace and rejection of chaos. My intent is to fuse the static pure digital documentation of these bodies, with the colorful and fluid feelings of memory and nostalgia, and a joy for the place itself.