Drawing from / Tending to is an ever-growing series of panels I make using a flatbed scanner. Improvising, I haphazardly select printed images & other ephemera from piles of my own archival material, and move these objects across the photographic sensor to create these digital collages. I don’t predict the outcomes, which cannot exist without being perceived by the sensor… In lieu of a darkroom to play in, I use this technique as one of my rituals of surrender. Just as in the darkroom I close my eyes and suspend my own disbelief, inviting chance into my process and being open to the existence and influence of the Divine, I mimic that suspension also through digital processes.

Though celluloid and darkroom techniques have an aura of sensuality and magic that may be desired by anyone across any barriers of difference, these tools and techniques are not accessible to everyone – they’ve only been available to me for fleeting moments in time. Whenever I face external constraints, I want to be able to embody resourcefulness, and provide an example of what one *could* do… That’s a part of why I try to explore and share so many different techniques, and have hesitated to follow paths that seemed to play too heavily on being “exclusive,” or just were too exclusive by circumstance.

This photo series is an exercise in, and example of, following the process or letting the process lead you, and actively rejecting the requirement of a polished, resolved outcome. Just practicing… with whatever tools you have on hand, listening to your environment, tending to the archive, and speaking in images, through, with images, or whatever your own art thing is… your own intuitive languages.

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I spent my teen years and 20’s on social media, and so it wired my brain a particular way. I used social media to practice art, and be in conversation through art… Social media was one of my addictions, it co-mingled with all my other addictions and became detrimental to my life. I don’t believe that platforms owned by oligarchy boys clubs are going to actually aid in truly empowering us to healthily communicate toward liberation. They have made their intentions clear to us. We need to listen to the reality of our own power to choose. We can mitigate monopoly.

I reflect that I am likely birthing and sustaining a photo project like this because my energy is no longer being leaked and milked via social media platforms, nor through other structures of domination and extraction which have in the past drained me of my gifts. Now I channel my energy into projects like this, which serve as an going “feed,” and a direct line between me and those who are interested in what I do. This direct line is important so that what I make and share is not tampered with. By ensuring a direct line, I minimise the opportunity for my own representation of myself to be misappropriated by ill-willed forces. The information is here for you to access, and you can make up your own individual mind about it.

I recommend you try an exercise like this… and not to show on the internet, but just for yourself. I show my work so that it can serve as an example, but you don’t have to share your work publicly, and you have to be careful not to constantly view/judge what you make through the viewpoint of an external lens/an imaginary audience – this is one of the risks of spending formative years posting on social media, your brain may have been trained to do tricks(post) for treats(likes). You can make private art, just for you and/or for people you love and trust. ❤

– June, 2026