(a project in progress)

Overview:    This is currently a continuation of my practice in exploring consumer landscapes. The logic of the retail big box store is as familiar as highways, strip malls, or downtowns—a common vernacular, a matrix of popular culture, an architecture woven into the universal language of consumption. Through the visual technique of Mise en abyme, I intentionally and playfully reflect my personal histories and professional practice by repetitively intervening with sculptural collage and photography.

Process:    In co-opting a studio space, I utilize in-store display cameras (tethered phones, tablets, and cameras) to combine and recombine consumer and commercial elements found throughout the store—stock photos, colors, displays, price tags, goods. These interventions, arranged as in-camera sculptural collages, are made without permission or destruction. The resulting imagery is then printed via a superstore’s photo department, serving as source material for a subsequent installation. These installations move back and forth, from in-studio to "in-store-studio" multiple times.

Myself:    Being raised in the American Midwest and now working as a commercial photographer, my engagements within these consumer landscapes carry a degree of complexity. Growing up, these spaces served as community hubs where commerce intertwined with personal interactions—I would get my hair cut, run into neighbors, see family, and play hide and seek through a fluorescent maze of shelves and displays. Now, having lived in Los Angeles for almost a decade, stepping into a "big-box store" overwhelms me with a wave of nostalgia; the sensory memories are deeply personal, evoking a sense of homecoming. However, my perspective on these spaces has evolved, now imbued with a critical lens shaped by my background in consumer image-making. With a seemingly collective inability to envision a world beyond global consumer capitalism, these reunions can still feel like navigating through a fluorescent maze.