Projects
The Headlight Children
Collaborative Arts Collective/Circus/Extravaganza
Enjoy an early iteration of Headlight Children, featuring founding members Kama and Jampa, with Quentin as Ariel:
Silver Salt
Much of my work with film cameras has been about process: just taking pictures. That said, I had a very productive period of solo photo shows from 1999-2009, after I moved back to Santa Cruz County, California, after living abroad. I sold my greeting/post cards and framed work throughout the county, and was very active in the local art scene. I have found myself concentrating for a while now on organizing old negatives rather than shooting new rolls of film, so I was relieved to find myself getting excited while looking for a used Lomo Kompakt Automat—mine has been inoperative for years, and the original LOMO LC-A is one of my favorite cameras.
“Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience…You can’t go looking for it: you can’t want it, or you won’t get it. First you must lose yourself. Then it happens.” —Henri Cartier-Bresson
Moving Pictures
Filmmaking encompasses so much of what I love to do as a creative person: capturing and editing audial and visual elements to make a statement or tell a story. Life plays out in mysterious ways, and I failed to pursue this artistic path in a more substantive way. I hope to be able to salvage some of my short work, including a stop motion animation I made in Boston, but mistakes were made (with memory stick transfers) and digital editing will be a learning curve. The one regret I do have (As Bresson states “Oop! The moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”) is failing to shoot a bookend to my first Super 8 short, Combat Zone. The second short was to be in color, and I planned to shoot it in North Beach, California, when The Condor Club and Lusty Lady were still highlights of the area. The soundtrack was to include The Residents song Loss of innocence.
Craftwork
You can find my blank greeting cards, postcards, suncatchers, pinback buttons, magnets, and jewelry at Old Skool’s in Ellensburg, and Larson Gallery in Yakima.
Cassette Tape Project(s)
In 1982 I made a super-8 film: A Lineman Is Better Than A Man Who Hands You A Line, which explored personal relationships by juxtaposing snippets of conversation with close-up imagery. The soundtrack for A Lineman morphed into an audio collection obsession, in which I collected over 2,340 hours of sound, interviews and conversations using a cassette tape recorder between1981-1995. I have recently been inspired by another archivist; so many options for these tapes—transcription; Mp3s; mapping histories.
An Academic Manuscript (?!)
A portion of my master’s thesis was published in an academic anthology in 2020. After reading this excerpt, two of my close poetry friends asked to read the entire paper, after which both of them said “This should be published!” Well…the first step on that road would be to actually type it up. At the time it was originally written I had to use someone else’s word processor and printer in order to get a formal final draft to my advisors.