Art is nothing without dialogue. At the end of the day, I am little more than the applicator of colors on paper. So it is both humbling and special to see that something as basic as a set of pictures on a wall is enough to draw people together. We humans are peculiar and endearing like that. For all our cynicism about humanity, time and again we prove that the simplicity of a flat piece of paper is enough to make us stop and look, a song or some spoken words enough to make us gather in a crowded room and resonate with other people.
To the people who attended my reception at Ploch Art Gallery, thank you for being there not just for the show, but for the experience. Anything can look good on paper. It takes people to make that paper mean something.
On that note, thank you to my friends who came to support me. Many of you drove an hour or more to be there. Thank you to Barita Vincenti, Adriana Moracci, Alicia Candiani, and Daniela Ruiz Moreno at Proyecto’ace for inviting me to do a residency and helping me produce my book, The Golden Cage, which has turned out to be a critical point in the development of my newest work. You are truly masters of your craft. Thank you to Latasia Lowery for offering feedback on the final text and design of my book, The Golden Cage. Thank you to Latasia and Jer Yang for your feedback on my talk, and always being willing to listen and discuss ideas. Thank you to the people at Museo de Arte Moderno for inviting me to do a residency in Chiloé, where I was able to reach another turning point in the goals of my work, and to Jose Salas and Javiera Castilla for being such great hosts during my stay there. Thanks for taking me bird watching on the island. Thank you to Adam Cohen and Mandy Tsai for being incredibly reliable friends and helping to install the art at Ploch. You saved me much time and sanity and probably treated the work better than I do. Thank you to Pedro Castro for taking the beautiful photos featured in this post so I can share these moments with those who could not attend the show. Thank you to Robin Luther for all your coordination, marketing, promotion, and general time and hard work to make this such a seamless event. Thank you to photographer Bill Zuback for writing one of the kindest responses to the work following the reception. I’m honored by your words and can’t express my respect for your character and perspective enough. I’m forgetting a gazillion people, but thank you to everyone for listening to my story and sharing yours as well.
The show is still on display through May 18th. If you are so compelled to visit the Wilson Center (and I encourage it, they have great performances there), I invite you not to see art not as a static portrait, but as a mirror that changes depending upon who views it. In that exchange, I hope you may see something the rest of us did not, and thereby start a new conversation.
