Lillie
2024
oil on canvas
This piece is a meditation on my younger sister, Lillie, as she puts on makeup in her bedroom. Since COVID happened, she spends a lot of time in her room, filming videos, talking to friends on FaceTime, and listening to music. Her room is beautiful to me, as her most intimate personal space but also as a sort of stage, a transitional zone between her private reality and the one she presents through images. Each area of the room is lovingly curated, ring-lit, and displayed. Spray paint, cigarette boxes, CDs, and string lights adorn her walls. Sonny Angels stare down mischievously from her makeup dresser, a record player spins XXXTentacion on vinyl, and lego flowers gather dust in a vase. Her room operating doubly as a sanctuary from family life and a screen facing out towards her audience, on which to project fantasy and identity.
Thank you to @_dreabgon_ and @haviepaints for curating this piece for “Por La Sombrita” at @altura.la . And thank you to my dad for building the frame it showed in there.
This is a book consisting of 126 images sourced from the iOS “Live Text” search function in the Photos app. This function is new on iPhone. It enables you to input a word, and the software will comb through your photo library and show you every image containing that word. Useful to find a photo of your passport, for instance. The word is highlighted in yellow.
I was curious to use this new function as a way to catalogue and re-contextualize a death.
In 2016, when we were 17, my girlfriend and best friend committed suicide. Before she died, during an argument, she deleted every photo she could find of herself from my phone. This has left me with a lack of material by which to remember her accurately.
I typed her name into the search bar of my iPhone, which pulled 126 images containing the word “Eileen” from of a total of 59,437 images. These images are not necessarily of her. One was selected by the software because her name was printed on the shirt of someone accidentally captured in the photo, many more were screenshots I had taken of a song or of a meme at the same time she had texted me, her name appearing in a notification.
This process was surprising, and significant to me. I will attach images of some pages.
1. The cover was selected because this painting is called “Eileen in a White Chair” by Anne Redpath which is contained in the image’s metadata
5. Software highlighted name on a shirt. Photo taken during a college lecture to get the homework.
6. Handwritten note. Software detects handwriting as well.
9. Screenshot of a meme, while she texted me
I am excited to share a mural project painted in collaboration with my friend and teacher Axel Void @axelvoid and big homie Lauren Day @guzzkill
Akron, Ohio, United States.
2022
This piece is a note on human inter-relational experience. The work presents a highly specific, anonymous interaction between neighbors in the digital realm.
The image is sourced from a post on the Neighbors app, a location based message board designed to connect Ring doorbell cameras into a network of private surveillance, with the intention of “always knowing what is happening in your neighborhood with real time, hyper local safety.”
The posting was created on June 18th, 2022 by an anonymous neighbor 3.4 miles away from the site of the mural. The post is titled: “Unknown visitors, Strange kids at my door 10:30 pm do you recognize them?”
The Ring doorbell footage shows a young man at the door for about one minute; the footage is grainy and black and white, he is hard to make out and shuffles from side to side; a friend waits in the background on a bicycle.
Twelve commenters on the post argue on whether or not the boy appears suspicious, or if he is merely looking for his lost dog; casing the house or calling for help.
This piece proposes a discussion point on irrational fear, the changing nature of surveillance, and an overarching sense of paranoia in modern society.
Special thanks to @thecuratedstorefront , Rick, Courtney, and Liz, for organizing and their hospitality. To Ro and Steve for helping out in production and for their friendship and to Tony for being a part of this project.
