Alabaster Series

An Aesthetic Experiment

The Alabaster series marked my first exploration into my current method of collage. For years, I had all my clippings saved in three-ring binders using trading card, photo, and business card sleeves — hundreds of meticulously cut objects sorted by category. I grew frustrated, however, with this system’s tendency to paralyze me when looking through all of them, and the creative limitations of working with “objects” rather than “shapes.” With this series, I gathered an aesthetically unified set of clippings, created as many compositions with them as I could, and kept the best few. Soon after, I took everything out of my binders because I preferred the spontaneity of digging through loose, randomized piles, and I began curating more collections to play with, two of which became the Placid Deformation and DOOMGOD series.

Call of the Rabbit Hole

Everything Will Be Explainable is sort of an honorary member of the series. It grew from the same pieces, but it took on enough of a life of its own that it doesn’t quite fit with the others. It became a statement on Q-Anon and a kind of neo-mysticism that has grown in some circles online. The allure of conspiracy thinking is not the discovery of truth, but the ability to take part in weaving it. It’s a story one tells oneself to explain the complexities of the world, not unlike the myths devised to explain creation or other natural phenomena. The high overlap between Q-Anon and adjacent conspiracy followers and religious fundamentalism is no coincidence.