I began a recent three-month residency in Arkansas by visiting thrift stores and answering local online for-sale ads. This search and discovery is how I start most of my projects. It teaches me something new about a community and, at the same time, I gain a collection of unexpected objects to work with.

I discovered an old trucking airhorn on a back shelf of an antique mall. I bought a rusted spinning retail rack from someone's back yard. And many small objects that I couldn’t identify.  Each item is a remnant of its past — a business gone bust, children grown and out the door, an old occupation, hard times.

My practice is fueled by these leftovers. I covet the underdogs that go unsold — the slightly damaged seconds, the markdowns. I’m drawn to their scratches and creases. These lonely, floating bits are as unmoored as me. The connection is personal and emotional.

These are fragile things—not materially, for they have survived years of neglect. But they are parts without a whole, separated from their tribe and function. They have lost their names and fallen into humble and mute abstraction. I add them to my collection.

“Retail Complications” is a sorting and reshuffling of all the things I found during my three-month stay. The combinations surprised me. This is what I love about photography; how objects whose only real connection is juxtaposition can converse and conspire to craft their own universe. Once overlooked, these objects are now the center of attention. The camera performs this transformation effortlessly.

While I'm refurbishing the objects in front of my camera, I enjoy reimagining the photographic space itself, often involving drawing and digital mayhem. Rather than quiet reverence, my work creates noisy problems for its audience. But I hope it also evokes the joy I feel in their creation. Can pleasure and disturbance be tethered together? That is what I’m seeking in my recent work.

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