Troctopus, 2023. Hardcover. According to the artist: "N is for Nightmare is a project that has evolved out of the act of archiving, organizing, and exploring my nightmares since 2016. The monsters in my dreams have been represented, not as characters of terror, but as friends, comrades, and lovers. Through that act of compassionate representation, this series catalogues my attempts to come to peace with these monsters of my own creation and can be conceptualized also as an act of self love."
A set of three volumes bound in blue, red, and green cloth with embossed letter "n" and volume numbers to each front board. This at times comical nightmarish alphabet book features pop-up letters, illustrations, and 26 nightmares. "A is for the albino alligator that chased me into an egg shaped sleeping chamber ... I is for salt and pepper flavored ice cream ... Z is for the Zombies that tried to eat me and then sign me up for Chase banking." Housed in a yellow cloth covered slipcase. Case size: about 8.25 x 8.5 inches.
Artist's Statement: "My artwork poses questions about the mechanics of how we remember – the complexity that exists within those entangled systems. I visually introduce instances of slippage in our recollection of the past and the decay of memory towards nostalgia. Through my work, I gather and sift through intangible archives: dreams, nightmares, and memories themselves to find how these essences make statements about the importance of memory but also the futility and temperance of life. I use the systems of remembering hidden within the body to make statements about identity, fear, and longing but also to search for the morphology of nostalgia. With a combination of watercolor, ink, game design, and book arts I create tension between the real and the surreal and uncanny. This combination disrupts the recognizability of the archive and thus also disrupts the stability and the seductive nostalgic essence of the past. These techniques pose the past as questionable, memory as simulation, and evidence as incomplete. My work seeks to make visible our growing pains and to reject comfort in the notion of a perfect genesis." Fine. More