02-19-24

While on a phone call today, I was asked what two projects I was most passionate about, and excited to continue in my life right now – I immediately answered "The Newsletter and creating furniture.”

With their response, soliciting more in-depth detail and explanation as to why those two things were my immediate response, I began to realize something profound. 

Growing up in an era where technology was constantly put in front of me and presented as a new, fun, cutting-edge, revolutionary thing that I was (literally) growing up with, I was lucky enough to have a "normal" childhood. One without smart phones and iPads, but instead magazines and scraped knees.

I think my hunger for physical things stems from a place that I'm now realizing points back to my childhood of being infatuated with the tangible and not the digital. Of course, I grew older and logged hundreds of hours on video games throughout high school and thousands on YouTube throughout lifetime. I'm not proud of it, but it's the reality of growing up in the era of digital things.

If I think back as far as I can to when I first began acting on creative ideas and taking photos, I've always dreamed of having a magazine, a book, or some type of physical compilation of things that I've created to hold in my hand.

For a while, I even entertained the idea of my portfolio being a physical semi-gloss, perfect-bound, magazine that I gave away to anyone interested in my work in place of the traditionally expected business card.

I now live in an apartment where some of the most used pieces of furniture are designs that I have drawn up and fabricated for daily use.

I'm writing all of this down because I've realized that there is a very high chance that everything I so fervently seek to accomplish and create, is all completely and wholeheartedly unto the idea of more human interaction and less digital affiliation.

A magazine instead of a PDF. A book instead of a website or blog. A table instead of a render. An experience with something instead of the voyeuristic approach to life we’ve adopted through screens.

Community is at the core of why I desire to create. 

To create art that invites people to experience each other. To build a chair and design a table that enables two or more to gather and share a meal, tell a story, laugh, and connect.

To handle a book or a magazine with paper that holds creative thoughts and pictures scattered throughout.

Even The Newsletter is an invitation to community in a way. Its current form being digital installations that get emailed to people is, in a sense… topics of conversation that people who receive The Newsletter can use with their friends, and hopefully one day, open in a hardcover format, and read in their downtime.

End.