Patent Leather Sun. Artist’s book, digitally printed on 80lb coated paper, 32 pages (edition of 50), 8.5 x 11 inches, 2024

This project examines the idea of reproduction—a word which at once conjures the act of making a copy and giving birth. In this work, I use colored paper, text, a camera, and an ink-jet printer to create a visual environment marked by striking color, recursive images, and compositional variation. As printed images are incorporated into new compositions, the figure-ground relationship grows more unsteady, along with a murky sense of scale and spatial sequence. As the viewer turns each page, the act of reproduction—in both senses of the word—becomes more evident. In this world of image-within-image, the frame is in constant negotiation. Text might evoke an initial impression, only to become modified on the next page by additional information: new phrases, shadows, colors, or scale changes. Cumulatively, the text in this work suggests a maternal presence, nature, and a fragmented self—a self that cannot come together neatly, and which only becomes more fragmented as a result of the endless interiority of pictorial space.