Discovering through the act of making

My drawing subject is the human form. I focus on my own body in my large scale, and text-related pieces. I also work from direct observation and invention. I am actively searching for ways to express my gender identity and sexuality. With the drawing, collage and free writing, I broaden my notions of what it means to reconstruct while I simultaneously deconstructing the human form. Creating the form in public reveals how it's created. The materials and public performance further aid me in my quest to establish and maintain my identity(s) as a gay black male. I am attempting to dissect and explore each facet of what it means to be a gay person and a person of color in the 21st century

The Queen\u27s Software: A Personal Exploration on Failure, Discovery and a Commitment to Not Knowing

I am interested in how failure, promiscuity, irrelevance and delight can live simultaneously in a process based space. Dancing lives in between knowing exactly what and not knowing at all. Dance is my middle, my way of being even when disjointed, discombobulated and on the brink of failure; dancing enchants my inner freak. I actively try to cultivate a process as a place of exploration, research and investigation with permission to change, evolve and develop into something very different from the initial starting place. How my process can live in between pleasure and function, meaningfulness and abstraction, investigation and direction is relevant in keeping a process complex and stimulating. Searching for what is revealed through process and not what is given to benefit the product is where I seek to depart from dissecting a work for its content. I am interested in work that raises questions, feelings and ponderings without clear answers. I don’t know what I want to make, but that does not mean I can’t find out along the way. It is here that I find vitality, it is here that I begin

The Dilettante

The printing of this book marks the end of a year of deliberating, searching, sifting, procrastinating and finally decision making. These pages include what I consider to be some of the finest work by young artists in Cache Valley. I must admit, I am rather in awe of my contributors. I have always been frustrated by the fact that I seem to have no outlet for my creative urges. Something always seems to get lost between my brain and my pen, So, my consolation prize is the opportunity to work with some artists whose talents I respect very much. By publishing The Dilettante I hope to draw greater attention to these artists whose work I feel is deserving of greater exposure

Beyond the ocean - a short dialogue with R.Rolland

In this text, I am considering the question `what I am ultimately searching for ?', attempt of systematising metaphysical reflection using in particular the singular and imagined experience of the ocean in order to distinguish between to types of relations of the subject to its world which allows to understand the transition from nihilism to faith

Amor fati

I am searching for a way to grieve someone I never knew. At age 26, I was lucky enough to meet the woman who would become my wife. We quickly discovered that there were many coincidences and connections that could be found when we examined our lives a little more closely – our parents shared a wedding anniversary, our fathers each had five siblings, Alice’s parents shared their names with my grandfather and his second wife (Walter and Joan). But what quickly became apparent to me were the links between Alice’s mother and my grandmother. Apart from photographs and memories shared by those who knew them, I would never know them. Both lives ended tragically young. Both died from genetic diseases. Photographing, for me, is to write a metaphor. There are things unphotographable – how do you create an image of someone who died a quarter of a century ago, a person you have never known? In varying sizes and at varying heights, my photographs act as constellations within which relationships begin to form independently of the connections that I draw between them. By searching for visual pleasures in the world around me using multiple formats of photography, I make visual the abstract histories that are known to me about Joan and Jean. Through examinations of heredity and meditation on coincidence and predetermination, I cling to what will inevitably be lost, trying to view grief not as something that passes, but something we are always in the midst of

Science, Aesthetics, and the Liberal Arts Tradition

Twenty-five years ago I was asked to deliver a Last Lecture as part of a Student Entertainment and Lecture Fund program at Ouachita. As a thirty-five year old, I was a bit perplexed at the prospect of preparing a last lecture. Egad, why would a thirty-five year old professor be delivering a last lecture? Several thoughts went through my mind. One might be disenchanted with educational institutions; one’s health might be in decline; one might have developed personal or philosophical differences with the administration that require relocation; the list goes on. Now, I am sixty, a last lecture has more meaning, although even now, my retirement is not imminent. In part, I offer this qualifying comment because of the ribbing my colleagues have been giving me since Susan’s email last Monday announcing the last lecture. The main value in delivering such a lecture twenty-five years ago and delivering one again now is the soul-searching that one does as one distills the variety of experiences to determine the few major themes that define who one is, what one values most, and what legacy one would like to leave. Numerous topics came to mind, ones that would be fun to prepare and deliver – the molecular basis of good and evil, the importance of diversity, the balance between tolerance and intolerance, where would we be without Darwin, would God be pleased with the box we’ve put Him in, society as organism, the importance of passion, let’s get on with stem cell research … the list goes on. Reflection is fun! Over the months of reflecting, I kept coming back to the theme that has defined my journey here at Ouachita – the importance of the liberal arts education. It’s personal, it’s professional, and it’s the essence of what I am and what I value

Off center : moments of collision

There is something in the way the light breaks through clouds still dark with remnants of a storm. There is something in the way the wind moves through the trees. Bright light peeks through backlit cracks in a closed door, a moment missed if residing on the other side. What does it mean to try and look beyond something that blocks our sight? Our proximity dictates our viewing experience: it guides our perception, we shift in response. I am a permeable sieve that is trying to understand the nature of its vessel. My work does not include any images of the human form, yet it is entirely about navigating the world as a curious human being. I map the fluctuation between perceptual and psychological dips and crests along the way. The images I ingest reflect these reactions. On Earth, our mark is everywhere. I am constantly searching for connections that exist between external things nearby, or something much more distant. To reach out for something is to long to bring it closer to you, but you will never know how far you need to travel if you cannot see clearly. I want to understand the structure of space by confronting its absence as I work my way through dimensions.Studio Ar

Seeking an Aesthetics of Metafiction

According the Oxford English Dictionary, metafiction is ‘fiction in which the author self-consciously alludes to the artificiality or literariness of a work by parodying or departing from novelistic conventions…and narrative techniques.’ In short, metafiction announces itself as a textual artifact and examines the very nature of fiction. Metafiction has been defined as such, but I seek the effect of the text upon the act of reading and the reader: into what space is the reader initiated when the boundaries between author-text-reader become dismantled or confused? What does the act of reading become, beyond a mere analytic exercise? I am searching for the beauty of metafiction: is there a specific aesthetic quality to metafiction? How does the importance of reading change with the recognition of a text as metafiction? Furthermore, I seek to critique the acquired definition of metafiction: do all texts have an unspoken metafictional quality to them? This thesis is an exploration of these questions, driven by the examination of fictional and theoretical texts in conjunction with my own work

Mother Superior

Prologue /The Lake Within I am a fisherman. Every time I raise my arm to cast, I’m searching for an answer. What is a lake? I throw my lure at the lilies of my childhood, the sunken log of my crib. With every cast I hope the truth will follow it back, this little piece of me I offer to the mystery. My earliest memories are at the bus stop, where a shroud of mist swirled about me and I listed side-to-side, six-AM eyes drooping while I waited for that big yellow ship to bust through the fog and open its doors before me. I was never a good sleeper, rarely felt awake, and when the bus would barrel along the shore of Long Lake, I’d rest my head against the foggy window and pondered how the water could sit so utterly still, yet churn the mist as if the fact the lake existed made reality tremble. I thought there must be something beneath the surface that shifted the air upon its waking, like my dad when he’d start the coffee pot with a hiss of steam, or the eruption of old truck engines across our village of fifty people or so, or a swirl of smoke bursting from the nighttime’s remnant coals when I’d open up the woodstove and feed it the day’s first log, as I’d been taught to do if I wanted to stay warm