The Need
My “mobile” studio art began for me as it does for many artists of all walks of life, through music. My favorite band, The Glitch Mob, teamed up with StageBloc Development to produce the Mirrorgram app for iOS. This gave me the opportunity to take seemingly mundane photos from my everyday life on my Iphone and transform them into a whole new visceral experience with my Iphone. They began to act as a photo album of my life. Each photo contains and conveys a memory, each discernible only by me and those involved. However I can proudly share my experience, as complex and as masked as they are.
The need to make art on-the-go arose from my lack of having a physical studio space. I had just moved from Oklahoma where my own backyard served as both a sculpture and a painting studio where I could play and experiment with different mediums. Moving to Boston meant giving up this physical space to create in. I had nowhere that I could set up shop. Nowhere I could let creativity and messes flow and intermix. As I delved into the world of photography apps I discovered more powerful ways to distort and embellish the world around me. I now use over 20 separate apps in a physically infinite studio that is with me wherever I may roam.
Influences in the Digital Age
I purchased my first iPhone in Boston in 2013.
Inspired by the Glitch Mob, whose classic methodology and compositional structure is contrasted by their use of tech, I use image manipulation via a variety of apps on iOS to create modern, digital collages. Largely influenced by Boston’s urban, contemporary architecture and modern geometric shapes, mundane photographs of familiar cityscapes and favorite hiking spots are transformed into surreal yet somewhat familiar scenes.
Incorporating visual influences from contemporary surrealism, I mix natural and urban structures to add wonder and playfulness to otherwise mundane moments in our human experience.
Philosophy
My use of an iPhone for artistic creation and expression represents a fundamental shift in the experience of art and the aesthetic expression. My mobile art series focuses on abstract expression through use of geometry and masking techniques, as well as distorting reality through photo manipulations.
The process involves a characteristic development of personal aesthetic expression and through curiosity and exploration. Making art, and the experience of it, becomes an integral part of daily life and the digital experience. As the rise of Instagram’s artistic community would suggest, my work is intended to be experienced through the medium of a mobile and digital device. The accessibility of an iPhone and app technology is the appeal of digital media: sharing my work on social media in effect make an iPhone an art gallery in every pocket and purse.
