Shining Opus Designs

Reassembled Consciousness

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            I received my first camera as a gift when I was ten years old.  Ever since then I have been fascinated with a camera’s ability to capture pieces of my human experience in a way that expresses the way I see the world.  I have always been aware of the strange communion between different aspects of my life, and that has led me down the path of exploring multiple exposures and combining separate images in order to create a more powerful final piece.                          When I discovered my love for making jewelry, I knew I had found another ingredient for my photographic journey.  My goal in creating this body of work is to instill a sense of wonder to the viewer and express my passions for jewelry and photography through surreal imagery.  I am fascinated with the amount of detail that can be displayed in a small piece of wire-wrapped jewelry, and I emphasize that in my prints by changing the apparent scale of the jewelry images.   For example, in the piece Inward Focus, I combined the photograph of train tracks with a piece of jewelry in a way that make the viewer look deep within the image.  The use of perspective in the train tracks ensures that there is no definite end in sight, much like the passionate experience I have during meditative jewelry and photo-making sessions. 

            I use the photographic process of shooting film and developing silver gelatin prints using caffenol as a developer.  I painstakingly combine different parts of images to create multiple exposure photographs.  This process is meditative for me, opening me up much like the process of creating wire jewelry does, and I try to express that mood in my prints.  My main inspiration is Jerry Uelsmann, in part because of his perfectly executed multiple exposure images and their surreal nature.  I have been repeatedly inspired by Uelsmann’s statement: “The goal of the artist is not to resolve life’s mysteries, but to deepen them.”  This speaks to me because my prints are symbolic to me. Although I do not require that my audience understand my work’s symbolism in one particular way, I am providing extended trails for thoughts and exploration.  The tracks of those paths never end.