NEWS/STATEMENT

MAKE IT RIGHT Photographic Series
in celebration of New Orleans 5th Anniversary Post-Katrina
Photographs of recent homes built by Brad Pitt's
MAKE IT RIGHT FOUNDATION
(Photography section under Artwork on this site)

UPCOMING BOOK: "Where We Know: New Orleans as Home" Broken Levee Books/Chin Music Press, September, 2010 (upcoming), which will include a selection of my photography from Hurricane Katrina as well as photographs of tattoos of New Orleans residents

UPCOMING PASTEL WORKSHOPS:
Terrebonne Fine Arts Guild, LA, November 12-13, 2010
International Association of Pastel Societies Convention (IAPS), May, 2011
New Hampshire Pastel Society, September, 2012

NATIONAL ARTS CLUB: One of my works was accepted into the prestigious "Pastel Society of America's Annual Exhibition" in New York.

RECENT NEWS: "Inner Spaces", my pastel show (May) at the Carol Robinson Gallery, New Orleans, was a huge success as was the article, "The Romantic Space" in the Pastel Journal Magazine (June)

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ARTIST'S STATEMENTS:

MAKE IT RIGHT Photographic Series:                   In commemoration of the memory of Hurricane Katrina, I am working on this series of photographs of the homes that have been built in the 9th Ward which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. I feel my photos reflect the forward-thinking, creative spirit, and positive turn the city has taken with the ideas and hard work of numerous committed individuals.
           Instead of concentrating on the destruction, these symbolize our city's new direction forward. There has been a dearth of positive symbols for the helps point in that direction.

ROOMSCAPES:
           In my roomscape” interiors, I attempt to capture the atmosphere, the air, the actual space in and around my environment. My choice of painting interiors for the last 25 years was my way to ‘“see the beauty of the ugly, to see the beauty of the commonplace….Discover beauty where others have not found it" (Charles Hawthorne) – to me, interiors have been largely overlooked as their own genre. After identifying just what it is in a particular setting that inspires me, I have tried to capture that mood or spirit via the medium of pastel. It is the message first, then the medium to express the message. I have found that pastels combine the advantages of drawing and painting – the linear, sketch quality of pastels with the fluidity and painterliness of oils. And now that the range of (light-fast) hues in pastel colors has greatly expanded, I can attain that intensity of light and dark contrast (chiascuro) and sense of drama and awe that previously I could only attain with oils.
              The strong compositional elements of Degas and the Japanese use of negative space have influenced my drawing a viewer’s eye through the painting. Using complementary colors (opposite colors on the color wheel) helps adjacent colors in the pastel to gain more intensity. Through texture (varied types of pastels applied in various ways on sanded pastel paper), I try to bring the viewer to another place and time. My palette has grown stronger and my style a bit more abstract in design and less detailed. I have grown to see that “less is more” in the sense that it is important to leave some unknowns for the imagination to ponder.

KATRINA PHOTOGRAPHY:
           I spent October, 2005 through March, 2006 taking photographs of the ravages of Hurricane Katrina as a way for me to deal with the tragedy it inflicted upon the city. What was most moving was that, in the beginning, I saw no people, no moving cars, no birds, no vegetation, no sound other than the rustling of debris. This wasteland seemed to have no beginning and no end. To document the panoramic views of this tragedy was simply too saddening a task for me, nor did it interest me to do this.                            My view in life has always been to find the beauty and humanity in what I saw. So I attempted to search for these intangibles in this devastation by zooming down to a more personal level and capturing small slices of life. Simple objects could represent enormous loss. The images I photographed are universal, yet personal.

"Eye on the Storm", Louisiana Cultural Vistas Magazine, September, 2008 is my photo-essay of some of my feelings and photography from this period.