Ever since I was a child, I have had the same lavender romance themed toile de Jouy curtains on my windows, paying homage to my French heritage. When I had asked my mom about the images of the cherubs and couples in countryside landscapes, she would explain that toile patterns always told a story. To help me fall asleep, I would create stories in my head about the different people and scenes pictured on my curtains; sometimes I would connect all of them into one big story and other times I would use one scene to inspire its own new story.
While at home during the COVID quarantine, I spent more time with those toile images from my childhood, a nostalgic form of comfort during tumultuous times. I became even more fascinated comparing the history of the toile patterns and fabrics in pre-Revolution France and the current political discussions, my personal memories of those childhood stories and how I have changed over the years, finding my own place in the world. This project is an exploration to confront and modernize these nostalgic stories, images and subjects; playing with the contrast of the traditional and contemporary fashions, country landscapes with modern photography and lighting, creating more of a tension between photographer, viewer, models and their pastoral environments. Just as these scenes were an idealized escape for the French in the years prior to the Revolution, these images represent a refreshing break from the chaos of our current times. As described in a recent New York Times article "Why We Reach for Nostalgia in Times of Crisis": "nostalgia serves as a kind of emotional pacifier, helping us to become accustomed to a new reality that is jarring, stressful and traumatic."
Christophe-Philipe Oberkampf opened his fabric factory south of Paris in Jouy-en-Josas in 1760, selling his new toile patterns to wealthy patrons in nearby Versailles and cheaper versions to a more mass general clientele. Many of the traditional patterns he sold recalled carefree scenes of figures frolicking romantically or happily working in the idyllic countryside. The toile fabrics were popular throughout France and embraced the style and imagery in the general culture of the time. Jean-Honore Fragonard painted happy lovers lounging or swinging under trees and Marie Antoinette recreated an idealized peasant village to enjoy with her friends. Louis XVI granted Oberkampf’s factory “the designation of Manufacturer Royale. Its pastoral designs became favorites of the French court, especially Marie Antoinette, who espoused the back-to-nature philosophy of Jean-Jacque Rousseau. After the French Revolution, Napoleon presented Oberkampf with the Legion of Honor.”(Palmer)
The toile stories served as an escape from the turbulent politics that would lead to the French Revolution. At the same time they celebrated the idealized lifestyle of the countryside everyman, resulting in it’s embrace by both the French nobility and the New Republic. It is interesting to reflect on this aspect of toile patterns in light of our current political situation: respect for nature with climate change, unequal wealth distribution, and powerful calls for political change in the 2020 election.
This project brings the nostalgic stories into the present, exploring how these childhood fairytales fit into a retreat from the issues that encroach into and have transformed our everyday lives today. Sneaking away from the computer screens, cell phones, disease, divisiveness, and politics that have overwhelmed 2020, this cast of characters have escaped into the dreamy world of nature, inviting the viewer to languish together in calm beauty and bliss.
STS Blue is an up and coming artist who has worked and been on tour with Rich the Kid, Jesus Honcho, and Supreme Patty. His music is very unique and these are some pieces I have worked on for him.
This is some of the content I created and collaborated on while working at RocNation.
Philautia or self-love describes two possibilities: an unhealthy narcissistic focus on yourself, when you become self-obsessed and focused on personal fame and fortune. On the positive side, there is a healthier version that enhances your wider capacity to love with a more solid, stronger self-esteem.
Many of us struggle with self love in this day and age. It’s hard to allow yourself the love you need where there is a stigma when self love becomes narcissism. That is why Rainer Rilke’s quote from ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ “We must embrace struggle, Every living thing conforms to it. Everything in nature grows and struggles in its own way, establishing its own identity, insisting on it at all cost, against all resistance.” stuck out to me. Showing that there is struggle trying to embrace self love and letting yourself be appreciated without it being perceived as narcissistic. Learning to move past self doubt, embracing our perceived “faults” and “imperfections”, and understanding the strength of loving ourselves is a positive goal and necessary before we can be part of a healthy relationship with another person.
You need to have a foundation of self love to build on in order to make a relationship work. This project is an exploration of my own self love. A place of calm but also aloneness, two different spectrums of being by oneself that can sometimes be positive or negative and be a struggle to get comfortable with. I am very comfortable being by myself in the calming scenes in this video while being alone is something I struggle with. This video allows me to appreciate myself, alone with my feelings and thoughts, accepting all that is “me”. It can be hard to be vulnerable with others, yet you are most vulnerable with yourself. So why not love that person?
While social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, I have found myself spending much of my time lost in screens and technology. You too?
Coming home during the Pandemic has led me on a nostalgic journey, causing me to interact with different objects from my childhood. This is a project where I chose to document me reconnecting with my DSI.
This project was a winner of the Yahoo Creator’s Contest 2020
Water is known to hold three states: solid, liquid and gas, but there is a theory that water may be even more complex than we think. Dr. Masaru Emoto studied the theory that water has a fourth phase in which it can hold forms of memory and emotion inside of it, changing its shape at the molecular level. This project is showing the emotions and memories I hold in myself and intertwining it with elements of water. I find myself very emotionally attached to water as an element that has calmed me during some of my most challenging times, whether it is walking along the beach, relaxing in baths, or listening to waves as I fall asleep. However conversely, I also have a fear of being in the middle of open water. These high and low contrast of feelings that I have attached to water are emotions that I also feel in my day to day life. I am intrigued by this theory of water holding emotions and memory in a way that it may contain many of my own emotions inside of it. Although this particular theory may be considered a “pseudo-science”, there is scientific evidence that water is proven to be a stress reliever and helps to calm people. Having lived near water my whole life, I have had specific experiences where even just looking at the water has completely relieved my anxiety. This series is emphasizing the emotions that water can hold and does hold for me.
“For I conclude that the enemy is not lipstick, but guilt itself; that we deserve lipstick, if we want it, AND free speech; we deserve to be sexual AND serious--or whatever we please; we are entitled to wear cowboy boots to our own revolution.”
-Naomi Wolf
In this project, I follow the transformative effect of internal mediation, figuring who we want to be through portrait studies using disguise and color. The intense lighting effects and brilliant hair, clothing and make up create the movement and energy of how figuring out who I am as I make that transition from teenage years at home into becoming an independent adult in the world. Through my art, I have the power to control and express this cycle as it is captured and transformed into a meditation of color and light. Inspired by the pop imagery and repeated photographic image of Andy Warhol’s work, this series looks particularly at his playful masterpiece "Ethel Scull 36 Times" (second image) as a visual and stylistic inspiration. The Identity Crisis series focuses on that transformative stage between youth and adulthood, the inner struggle of finding your voice, how you want to express your self and be seen in the world.
By Andy Warhol
With the Art of Tattoos, the human body can be transformed into a walking gallery. People can display their inner fascinations and fantasies as beautiful works of art on their bodies. Amazing tattoo artists develop their techniques and artistry into walking exhibitions. This 35mm series explores the process from tattoo parlors to equipment, there is almost a religious meditative exchange of trust between artist and client, a permanent mark the connects them forever.
There are quiet moments in our daily routines that are almost automatic and forgotten in the repetitive movements behind closed doors late at night or early in the morning. Washing, brushing, shaving, scrubbing, picking; these are activities that we normally do not reveal but we all share. La Toilette is a peak through the mirror at these small private moments.
