"Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second." 

Marc Riboud, Photographer

To this I add, not only every hundredth of a second, but every 3/8 of an inch.  When I make a photo-weaving, it is with warp and weft cut into 3/8” strips.  The process of combining multiple photographs into a single image takes many hours, allowing me to savor the place in all its details over an extended period of time.  I form a connection that lasts long after the piece is completed, and even after the original scene is obliterated by demolition and rebuilding.  Sense of place is the result.  Appreciation for those who went before me and invested so much of themselves in creating a landscape full of human endeavor and creativity, in the service of functionality.

I’m interested in the manufactured landscape much the same as archeological ruins are appreciated.  That is, for what they imply about the people who built and inhabited them.  I’m especially interested in the handmade details and craftsmanship involved and the care and skill that it took.

The technique I use was developed by combining my long-held interest in photography with a background in weaving and textile arts.  I take many pictures of a place, from a multitude of vantage points, and then collage them together by hand-weaving.  I employ distortions in perspective, as well as repetition and elimination, to create an abstracted version according to the character, or personality, that I perceive as inherent to the place.  I also create digital collages of the built environment.  The result with each body of work is a real/unreal portrait.  Abstraction creates a degree of disorientation and that slows down the gaze.  This is the effect I am after.  A brief, slow visual journey resulting in a deeper appreciation of the common places that surround us.