Drawn-Upon Portraits of Friends:
Moving Image Versions
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SIBLINGS DREAMING
My brother and sister lie on a trampoline in our backyard beneath falling snow. The stretchy fabric sinks under their weight, pulling them closer like magnets. Are they huddled by choice, or brought together by gravity? When we are lucky, sibling bonds can be both.
With swirling purple textures, I hope to evoke dreams seeping out of their heads. Or maybe the milk of a galaxy, in which snow becomes stars. In this cold world, shared dreams bring warmth.
TRANSMITTING VANESSA
My friend Vanessa has the enthusiasm and compassion of a true teacher, and a way of reaching students. Not even the distance to São Paolo, Brazil—or the Visa complications keeping her at home there—could stop her from reaching our film classroom in Syracuse, New York. Beaming to my students from another continent, with characteristic warm energy and light that travels like the sun's, Vanessa gave an inspiring presentation about surrealism and screened her beautiful senior thesis film — itself a heartfelt meditation on distance, and love transcending it.
This piece was created as a gift to Vanessa on her birthday, with gratitude that technology allows us to stay connected.
KAYLA DREAMING
In this selfie, my friend's knowing pose and sweet expression gestures toward a serene inner place the camera can't see. Each of us carries a private sanctuary—a mental dwelling we can retreat to behind closed eyes, and smile at. Safety and peace may smile back, if we can learn to love what we see there.
Replacing Kayla's context with a pitch-black void brought me further into the realm of an imagined inner world, evoking nighttime, or the backs of eyelids. Or maybe a movie theater—the dark room within which our collective dreams take form, as light on a screen. In spaces like these, we hope to meet ourselves (and if we are lucky, befriend ourselves too).
JULES IS MUSIC
[Description forthcoming]
TENDING TO LIGHT
On film sets, I'm amazed by how much time and effort is invested on getting light right. And how much of a difference that care makes. The world transforms through attention to how it is seen. Isn't that true beyond a film set, too?
Here we see an artist of light at work, serving as gaffer on a film set, taking care to illuminate a space and the story within it. He looks out of frame, inspecting the sights he's preparing. But my camera looks at him, more interested in the act of preparation than its result. The filmmaker in the portrait, Yushan, has a way of seeing that is highly sensitive to and appreciative of everyday beauty in all of its subtleties. The light seen here is in good hands!
LIGHT IN THE ROOM
When I took this photo, I was helping as an art director, melting wax into bottles at my friend Ghazal's apartment in preparation for her thesis shoot the next morning. Happy memories take on a certain aura that is not always visible in photos. By encasing my friend in a heightened world of color, texture, and a sense of warmth radiating from light sources in the image, I try to make visible the feeling of beauty in this memory, the way it exists in my mind.
With her head tilted this way, the shape of Ghazal's eye takes the place of a flame in the one candle left unlit. It's a fitting substitute, because much like the candles, her genuine nature has a way of lighting any room with warmth.
LOVING GUESTS
The summer after she graduated from Syracuse, my friend pictured here embarked on an ambitious road trip, driving across the United States from coast-to-coast. Through a coincidental intersection of time and space (that nearly went undiscovered, were it not for Instagram), we realized she was about to pass directly through my hometown in Colorado. My family was able to host them that night!
For Erica & Julian, a warm bed was a much-needed refuge after nights of sleeping on hammocks in parking lots. In return, they brought a spirit of abundant warmth and joy with them into the home, which I did my best to represent here through bright colors & scribblings. As Erica befriended my family's dog and Julian filled the living room with music, I felt gratitude for the beauty we can bring into each other's worlds when our life trajectories have the good fortune to cross and connect, in ways that are sometimes very unexpected.
ZARIA AND THE TOTAL ECLIPSE
During the total solar eclipse of April 2024, I loved observing its observers as much as the cosmic phenomenon itself. In this portrait, I'm directing attention away from the sun and moon, and toward my friend Zaria's joyful, bursting enthusiasm at the sight of their crossing. It's not every day that people gather to experience unironic, communal awe at the sky under which we find ourselves. And aren't all people a cosmic phenomenon, too, worth witnessing?
Side Note: In a strange instance of real life following fiction's footsteps, this was not the first time I’ve taken and decorated a portrait of Zaria observing the cosmos. The year before, she played the part of "Astronomer" in my short film Out of Frame. Here, unlike there, she didn't have to act.