Time
Capsules

My book project, which started over six years ago, has metamorphosed into much more than just books. What began with an old phone book has progressed into a new body of work. It is still similar, in many ways, to the first “book” pieces, but the addition of new sources of paper has changed the characteristics of the structures and expanded their meanings.

This project could easily be about waste and recycling. It is not. Rather, it is about the masses of information – more specifically, the overload of information in our lives. It wasn’t long ago that we only had to contend with television, magazines, newspapers and mail. Now, on top of those media, we have mobile Internet, electronic books, and the World Wide Web — which contains amounts of data so limitless we could never absorb even a fraction of it all.

To symbolically represent this aural and visual bombardment we experience, I have incorporated more text in my work. I believe that much of the information our brain processes is absorbed passively. Consequently, we have a mostly uncontrolled riot of information swirling around in our heads — a lot of which is ultimately useless and distracting.

With this concept guiding the work, the final product could justifiably look quite messy. But, however messy the concept is, this work still considers the subjective dialogue with the viewer, which includes text as well as composition and beauty. These latest images are more than a culmination of a new exploration into the infinite possibilities in which we encounter information. They represent our struggle to filter, at increasing speeds, the masses of information that confront us every day, and they are time capsules that offer a way to preserve the printed word on paper.