Artist Statement

I have always taken photographs of architecture, urban textures, plants, water patterns, and clouds as inspiration for compositions. The collected images inevitably fall into categories and stories that hark back to my first impressions of the city - the contrast between the shiny glamour of the tall buildings and the dirt and messiness of the street; how nature intervenes and softens the edges; the human hand element of graffiti and torn surfaces of posters.

The underlying theme lately is the visual recording of elements related to the gentrification process in Brooklyn. Scaffolds draped with netting, dumpsters of construction trash, chained plots of land, graffiti protests on billboards and signs announcing new developments.

In formal terms I like to play with positive/negative space and use collage and layering to engage the eye of the beholder.

The latest work is less geometric and more organic. It is based on a series of photographs I took in the New Mexico Mountains where a forest fire had destroyed the landscape several years ago but many half burnt trees still stand. These spoke to me of the suffering we are inflicting on nature and I felt compelled to honor the trees with portraits, close-ups and new images repeated on cloth. I am calling this series In Honor of Trees.