Artist Statement:
A wild imagination is what people used to tell me I had. Head in the clouds, they would say. It seemed dangerous to see the world differently. As if the adults were afraid the vines of stories might take root in my head and spill out of my mouth entirely.
They would bemoan the fact I had too much fluff in my head from reading books. Far too many knights and faeries and witches. I was a superstitious and shifty child, full of learned poems, brimming with the suns of distant lands that I visited through ink on paper.
I went places. I felt things. I learned about this world and those beyond. from my seat in the darkest corner of the library on the floor, where no one ever went. I was alone but never lonely. I was unpopular but I always had friends in the form of pages. I was poor but I traveled the universe.
The adults were probably right though, the stories did plant themselves in the fertile soil of my mind. They grew and wrapped themselves around my thoughts, wove themselves into my being. And now they spill not out of my mouth, but out of my camera.
This piece, titled "Hinterland Overgrowth" is dedicated to one of my favorite books of all time, The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert - I couldn't do the book any sort of figural justice like my other lit pieces, too many stories and characters within. Instead I ran with the theme I took away from the series - that fairytales are real enough to seep into our world, to climb off the pages, out of the hinterlands. Stories are alive, they are living, ever changing entities. It is up to us to ensure they stay evergreen.
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