Mike asked me an interesting question as we were hanging work last friday in Kaya:

"So, do you want to make work to exhibit?"

Now, anyone who knows me knows I'm a terribly classicist prude when it comes to all things art, and religion, related. I suppose he is asking if making work needs to be justified, and if so if hanging it is justification. Some say "the process" is the real art, and that the finished piece is simply an "artifact" of that process... but to answer Mike's question, and because I'm stepping into the void myself, here is why I do what it is I do.

I don't know if what I make needs, or necessarily deserves, a gallery space; I've never really considered myself an "artist." Artists have an artistic vision, an inner expression they want to share with the world. This has always befuddled me; I've never had such a consistent outlook on life or art. Much of the art world bothers me for some reason or another [this isn't the place to analyze it] and, like most of my personal life, I've discarded labels which don't work all that well anyway.

I believe in exploring, and use the camera to do that. Others may use other things, but I explore scale, locale, space, and time.

Yes, I explore time. And that is why I shoot film. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-digital [if I were, why would I write on the internet?] and digital is fantastic for everything it does. But if you were to look into my camera drawer you wouldn't find anything made after I was born. These tend to be Kodak box cameras made in the 20s, 30s, and so forth... they are simple, cheap, reliable- and easily modifiable.

In other words, I can add, remove, and modify lenses and shutters... manipulate space and scale, and understand how this thing works in a visible way a digital circuit can never show.

I can explore, in an unexpected sense, the times we're living in now- yes, these times are history of their own right- and give them a taste of times past.

So do I want to make work to exhibit?
Occasionally I do, but that's not why I'm doing it.