As an artist I have always explored ideas of community, race, and representation. My work documents experience, influence, collections and perceptions of groups. I collaborate with my subjects to create significant events or presentations.
The website, www.myvirtualmuseum.com, is an extensive, ongoing project that asks what would, or should, be saved? Curators choose objects, paring down the number of items to fit within my small vitrine, 12" x 12" x 15". Many of the archived items are important or cherished because of their association with memory and spirituality, others with ritual. Some objects are chosen to define an individual or event, some are a collection acquired over years. The objects are arranged in the vitrine, accessioned and photographed and then returned to the curator. The words of the curators about their choices are an important part of the work. This museum has no physical space or place and exists only in the virtual world.
Currently I'm asking my questions about archiving and choice to a group of people who have had far less stable and predictable lives. I collaborate with members of The Church Under the Bridge in Waco, TX, a non-denominational, multi-cultural church that has been meeting below Interstate 35, for sixteen years. Some of the people there have experienced periods of homelessness or incarceration, addiction to drugs and alcohol, mental illness or profound poverty and hopelessness. Many are working toward a new measure of stability and accomplishment. I ask each person what he or she keeps and why it is valued. Ownership, collections and value have a very different reality in this new work. The portraits are made under Interstate-35 on Sunday mornings, all year long. The choices and comments accompany the portraits in What I Keep, a collection of life size 24"x36" images.