Collected Works
Welcome to Collected Works.
Collection is a huge part of my practice.
This collection is extra-thematic. Think of it not as the product of a frustrated, un-credentialed curator, but more like Haňťa the paper crusher in Bohumil Hrabal’s 1976 novel, Too Loud A Solitude. Haňťa works for decades running a machine that gobbles up banned books, but also rescues them. Hoards them. Unwittingly he becomes educated by them. He has so many books, we are taken to bed with him, in a ceiling-high cave we imagine collapsing upon him. Both a savior and perpetrator in the destruction of words.
My sources are the detritus of people's lives, and often, collections just like mine. I resist the impulse to acquire them all, mine too will be sold in an estate sale one day. Perhaps after I am crushed by their weight.
Sometimes I buy something that is so remarkable I can’t believe I never heard of the artist. And that’s maybe the point.
Dead photographers don’t self-promote. Living photographers in estate sales have little monetary value. Being wowed in this space is the exercise/art of all of this.
I name things how I feel. I do some research, enough to be somewhat accurate. And I get creative with [descriptive titles], but not the important things.
