In Favor of Dreams : (view images)

Our first experiences of place are consistent across cultures and generations in that they are made up of the home, from cave to castle, parents to caregivers, wet nurses to teachers. These formative images and experiences are etched into our developing brain and become part of our consciousness of the world - these may range from loving to loathing, tender to terror, though for most of us somewhere in between.

It was my good fortune to have had a charmed childhood, a childhood during which I was encouraged in my creativity and able to explore the realm of my imagination's expanding world. Certainly my most formative memories come from the house in which I grew up with its large attic, basement laboratory for my grandfathers photographic work, and the various and secret closets and spaces under the eves of the attic. This gave me an awareness that made me a happy child and continues to make me a happy person to this day.

I owe my inclination toward architecture to a family line of architects going back four generations, and though my family history has framed my thinking form the start, I was not interested in becoming and architect. It was, however, architecture and the house I grew up in that provided me with a deep well of ideas and imagery that still inspires me today. Architectural plans create the pragmatic framework for a complex narrative of built space - they map the site and are the means by which we are able to experience place within the constructed landscape.

Space is neutral where as place is phenomenological, assembled by the brain from fragments of memory accumulated over time. Art in the 20th Century was concerned with the collage; the 21st century continues to deconstruct the fragmentary nature of life as an allegorical and metaphorical narrative. My observations and interpretations are represented as narrative, albeit, symbol system narrations.

Photography 2 : Allegories, Signs and Wonders (view images)

These works are composed of material from several sources, these sources include alterations of earlier works, Images fabricated with Photoshop and other digital manipulations. The architectural fragments holding the parts together are drawings from the archives of my Grandfathers architectural practice superimposed into the abstract spaces to create a narrative structure that is contradictory to the visual experience. The allegorical aspects are how we see and interpret meaning through signs provided in the image and the wonder of revealed truth.