Wasted Expressions

Outside a scrap metal yard in Austin, Texas, a worn dumpster stopped me in my tracks.  Dints, cuts, rust and paint melded together to create a composition reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock painting. I became fascinated that an object typically associated with garbage could be as aesthetically intriguing as a work of art.  This irony was the inspiration for "Wasted Expressions", a collection of abstract images found on the sides of dumpsters.   

Metal recycling centers, construction and demolition sites, and random street corners became my studios. Containers of refuse posed as my subjects. Encounters with heavy machinery created gestures. Rust served as paint. Time cultivated texture. Out of context, the banal had been transformed into an abstraction of painterly qualities.

Despite the intricacies found in each picture, the photographic technique I used was rather simple. Each photo was taken with the camera perpendicular to the side of the dumpster.  The objective of this technique was to present the worn metal as a flat canvas, diminishing as much of the photographic element as possible. Then, to heighten the ambiguity of the photographs, the images are printed on textured German etching paper, completing the transformation.

2009-2010