Over the last few years I’ve become more nostalgic about the past. I’ve always been interested in the past, but getting older has caused me to consider my own past. My latest exploration in nostalgia is a new portfolio titled “Excavating Childhood”. It represents an exploration of aspects of my youth between 1975 and 1980. I first got the idea for this series while visiting my parent’s in 2007. While walking around the backyard, I noticed a number of plastic models parts eroding out of the ground. Being an archaeologist by profession, I was intrigued. Finding these “artifacts” from my own youth prompted me to explore my own artwork from the same time period. Fortunately, I had saved many of my old negatives and drawings. I began scanning them and thinking about what I had intended for them when I first created them. I realized that when I first made the photographs and drawings, I had high ideals for what they represented, but was unable to fully realize them given the level of my skills and other technological limits. For this portfolio I created 45 black and white collages that combine photographs and drawings that I made between 1975 and 1980. These collages aren’t exact representations of what I intended them to be when I was young – rather they represent a synthesis of their original intent and my impression of what they mean now looking back as an adult. Clear as mud, right?
Excavating Childhood
