What feels like another lifetime ago, I made a CD. I felt very self conscious and looking back, judge my performances to be widely uneven. The parts that I can still bare to listen to, at the time I thought of nothing but what I was doing (talk/singing). The parts which are not as great, i was self conscious of the faces I couldn’t help but make while performing. A sort of seizure- scrunched up- ecstasy morphing into drawn- down horsey longness.

Way after the fact I felt what I had already intellectually known, no one listening to CD would think “Wow, I bet he had on weird faces while doing this.” And, that aside I now know it is highly subjective anyways. If one is a fan of a band, then in concert when singer looks like he perhaps could use an un-sharpened pencil put in their mouth, you think “Wow, he is really getting into it, this is intense.” Someone not into the band seeing same performance may snicker.

My In the Eights series is capturing looks we give but would largely prefer others not see. They are slurred to surrealistic proportions as I wanted to make it beautiful and off putting. It is not so much that for each of us our “eights” are there just below the surface, they come out, making appearances when we laugh, cry, are drunk, climax or for some of us, feel anger. It’s the terrible beauty.

The genesis of this series. My regular collages are very time consuming and slowly take over my studio with sheets of paper upon which rest tiny paper snowflakes. I alternate between doing a painting and collage. I worked hard to gain my collage chops and found as i worked on painting I missed it. I absolutely could not do both at once. When I am on the road, I am still creating but with the way my collage work is, that is all I would be doing. I came up with the idea to do drastically smaller ones which I would be able to do on the road and also while working on painting. Since I had the road in mind i knew I would not be able to use 100% my own images as I usually do. I also realized I may not be able to achieve my preferred density. The answer was to do portraits. My first few 8’s were found pictures. Reluctantly, I showed them. People really liked them an encouraged me to do more. I was able to get people to model for me which had been my one initial qualm about showing them initially.

They are small, all being roughly index card sized. I work no digital magic, utilizing old school technique of scissors and adhesive applied with a brush. As it is an ongoing series, I am always looking for new models, email me for details.

Model: Camila III