Cover artwork for “SHADOW KILLER”, the soundtrack to an imaginary slasher flick, Fall 2024.
“SILVER DESERT” originally served as the backing track I played improvisational guitar over last Summer in Rhyolite, Nevada for the first iteration of my Nevada Arts Council project grant multimedia project, “In Relative Obscurity (2023)”.
The track consists of cello drones in the key of shifting sand dunes, which resonate in the key of C; which I found reflected the remote location it was captured from.
It was ultimately in conversation with the environment I recorded it in; Calico Basin, as part of my artist in residency experience with the Cube Gallery in 2022. The desert landscape had never struck me as something, or somewhere, worth interacting with; let alone using it almost directly as I can as a medium to create new works. I’m thankful I came upon Goldwell Open Air Museum and it’s sculptures/stories. I look forward to creating more works in dialogue with these subjects.
Field recordings always interested me, but capturing this recording of a cello in such a large, open studio was great. It really let the room lend itself to the overall sound of the final result.
The inclusion of “Silver Desert” in a Deathbed Tapes record label release is a huge win for me, and quite the milestone. I look forward to submitting my works to future opportunities and different record labels.
It was the year I finally worked out of a legitimate art studio and had 2 different Artist In Residency experiences. Residency experiences are essentially giving someone gallery space to work and/or display their work. For some, it’s an experiment in transition when it comes to the environment they paint in. For others, like me, it’s an experiment in having ANY environment to actually paint in; with your body and soul (as cheesy as that is).
Having a studio space awarded to me via an application process was a lesson in patience that proved essential when applying these types of opportunities. Each phase of the decision process would include me weeks of waiting in which I would look inwards towards my self and any possible motivations that I could identify that might not be what I consciously believed was happening.
After a few weeks of reflection & lack of space to paint in at home, it became clear to me I wanted a place outside of my home to create large format abstract expressionist artworks. The point in my life in which I became aware of this was objectively the opposite of a time in which I could afford or even get to an art gallery, let alone work daily on my creative practices in one. Realistically, it seemed a rather long term goal, which I was honestly comfortable with.
Painting it of course more that just the act itself, though. This is something that is hard to articulate through words. And thus, after this loose goal was made in my mind in January 2021, I kept living, unknowingly jumping head first into a year that would see me work out of 4 different studio spaces in both New Orleans Square & Arts Factory. I would either pay rent or be granted a month or so in which I could paint in a particular space. One of these would be Fremont Country Club, in which I would write the poem shown in the image at the top of this post
I wrote the poem while I was absolutely pulling my hair out trying to imagine what I should submit as my first public art proposal idea. My mind had originally gone towards sculpture as the best medium to explore for this opportunity to display “site-specific artwork for the Wetlands Park using recycled and earth-friendly materials” that would be essentially be made for the general public.
In the end I would scrawl this poem into four planks of wood that were screwed into a wooden canvas I had painted for it’s background. I was happy with it, and I was happy to have been successful in my application process as well as carrying it out, from beginning to end.
Here is where you can find all ten artists that participated in the 2022 public art project, “MIGRATE”.
