A R T I S T S T A T E M E N T : S T U C K
What would you create if you had little say in your ingredients?
My 2014-2015 series, Stuck, was art therapy as much as it was a photography journey. It allowed for new (technology) freedoms, but the catch was a new set of (physical) restrictions.
For years I had been experiencing a problem with my hip that was only more recently discovered to be a birth defect. It causes me to suddenly and, without warning, lock in to place, with no ability to move below the waist for as much as a minute at a time, numerous times a day. And while a minute "Stuck" probably doesn't seem like much, people who have walked across intersections with me might disagree. Shear frustration and a need for positivity led to the creation of the Stuck series during a long wait for surgery to correct the issue. My odd manner of walking and sudden stopping started to require more and more explanation anyway, so I started to wonder if I was missing out on documenting some of the places I get Stuck to share with others. I decided to see what I could create in moments and surroundings that were not my choice. While my camera is an extension of who I am, my phone is the only object I carry with me at all times when Stuck happens, forcing this photographer to examine ways to work within the parameters of iphotography, a format I previously had not given much merit to.
S T U C K : a forced, fixed-perspective, iPhotography adventure.
2016: a note. Treatment was largely unsuccessful. While I am much more focused on my current works, new stuck images do pop up on my social media pages from time to time. And as it turned out, stuck ended up being a much larger conversation with it's audience about all of the ways we can find ourselves stuck. Emotionally and physically. And our power and choices within those moments when we are stuck. For those reasons, stuck became one of my favorite experiments/series for the conversation with it’s viewers, more than any of the images created.
Photography (and art in general) remain my best source of therapy.
#stuckserires