Indovina
I / DON’T / OWN / ANY / PETS
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: This is a small graphite drawing, about 9.33 inches long and 7 inches wide. This is a self-portrait in which I am criss-crossed on the floor in an empty room, directly facing away from the viewer and looking out a massive window. I am a 5'6", 21-year-old white man of average weight with very short brown hair, and I am wearing a white t-shirt and jeans in the drawing. The window is set against a dark wall that glows from the light outside, where there is an endless grassy field in an abyss of white. There is a cutout of a word written in each of the window quadrants: "I" in the top left, "DON'T" in the top right, "OWN" in the bottom left, and "ANY" in the bottom right. The word "PETS" is pasted down the center of the back of the white t-shirt, completing the sentence.
I AM / THE ONLY / ANIMAL
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: This is a small graphite drawing, about 9.33 inches long and 7 inches wide. This is a closely-cropped, shirtless self-portrait, with my left hand covering a part of my chest and my left nipple. Everything from above my navel is visible, except for my face, which is substituted for the snout of a cow. The background is very dark, almost pitch black, which makes the torso appear very bright. Centered on the cow snout are cutouts of the letters that make up the words "I" and "AM." "I" is placed directly above "AM," and both words are horizontally centered. On my left hand, letters making up the words "THE" and "ONLY" sprawl diagonally across the backside of my palm. The word "ANIMAL" is made from cutout letters that line the bottom of the piece, covering a segment of my stomach.
IN / MY / LIFE
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: This is a small graphite drawing, about 9.33 inches long and 7 inches wide. The pose I assume in this piece mimics the criss-crossed self-portrait in I / DON'T / OWN / ANY / PETS, only this time I am naked, and looking back at the viewer, my head in profile and facing the right. Bottom-center once again, I am criss-crossed in the same grassy field I was looking at through the window in I / DON'T / OWN / ANY / PETS. In the blank sky, cutouts of the letters that spell "IN," "MY," and "LIFE" arc over me, horizontally centered on the top half of the drawing.
Artist statement: THE ONLY ANIMAL, as a series, has to do with my body's relationship to sexual taboos, especially when it comes to the idea of becoming something "sub-human." These postcard-sized artworks, using graphite and cutouts of printed letters, embody the loneliness that comes from being new to a portion of your sexual identity that is uncommon in the world at large, being "the only 'animal,'" in a sense. In this way, these pieces show what it feels like to live in my body: the isolation that comes from a constant incongruence between my sexual desires and those of the people around me. Sexual deviance in this series is symbolized by the cow, which is both docile and wild, submissive and primal. These pieces were inspired by the idea of making Image:Text digital collage practices physical by rendering them in graphite and printing and cutting out bold letters to allow the artworks to communicate on a textual level.