“The residency changed my life - this without exaggeration. By providing time/space, it nourished an alternate understanding of who I am – as a person and as an artist. These emergent understandings continue to impact how I approach my photographic work.”
Artist Information
As I was growing up I had little interest in the arts. My interest was by happenstance. In the early ‘80s, my partner at the time concluded that I needed a diversion from working on my PhD and my “day job” working as a labor union representative, so she gave me a camera as a Christmas present. From nearly the first moment I opened the gift, my life fundamentally changed. While I still worked for the Union (retiring after 27 years), photography became far more than a diversion. Learning to “see”, learning to be a photographer deepened not only my sense of the world but also who I was/am as a person. Not only was I jazzed by the real understanding(s) that a photograph can offer but also by the very nature of the creative process/ artistic production. Nearly forty years later, I remain jazzed.