ARTIST STATEMENT

Everyone is afraid of something.
Whether they chose to admit it or not, they are.

I want to address two issues in this body of work. The first issue I want to address is peoples fears, and have them face their fears through the acknowledgment of them. I feel that in order for people to be completely honest with me about their fears they have to remain anonymous. In struggling with the idea, I began to wonder how I was going to keep the identities anonymous. My first solution was to ask people to e-mail me from an anonymous gmail account I had set up. However, after realizing the limitations of the anonymous email account because of my minute list of contacts, I decided to think broader. Then came my second solution, the creation of a blog that anyone from anywhere in the world could access, at any time. I have asked people for two things: one is to post a silhouetted image of themselves, and the second is for the individual to post what it is that they fear. With this piece, the second issue I want to address is the use of appropriation. In the beginning I had trouble wrapping my head around using appropriated work and calling it my own. After dealing with my issues of appropriation in a variety of ways, I think I have finally taken a big step forward in coming to terms with the idea of appropriating images. If I ask people for an image and they give it to me, I now feel comfortable calling it my own, even if I was not the person to actually push the button and take the picture.

Signed,

any.anonymous.person@gmail.com