Depicting abandoned goldmines in the American West, I drew the goldmine series digitally by hand (with tablet and stylus) from internet photographs, having never seen the forgotten structures in person. Inspired by psychoanalysts Jamieson Webster and Marcus Coelen’s intercontinental correspondence from their coauthored text, Figure Out, the series continues my longstanding inquiry into the complex web of American identity and desire. 

The goldmines encourage a reconsideration of the American Dream through a meticulous digital drawing intervention that blurs boundaries by oscillating between hand and computer, fact and fiction. The work extends the dynamic between touch, presence, and the physical world on the one hand, and absence, death, and illusion on the other hand, to a similar tension between the physical, analog world and the dematerialization of an increasingly digital world. The goldmine series takes a metaphysical look at the allure of American ideals and values as they become increasingly elusive and untouchable.

Figure Out focuses on a fractured and imperfect network of communication: of ambiguous dreams, indeterminate slips of the tongue, and language and culture barriers. The fractured and unanalyzed condition of the postmodern romance in Figure Out poignantly contrasts a powerful connection between two people to the fragmented world that both brings them together and keeps them apart, exploring themes like dreams, touch (and its impending absence), desire, contact, and mourning. While Figure Out focuses topically on an interpersonal relationship and the philosophical musings between two lovers, the goldmine series extends this inquiry to a cultural level. The desire for contact — with a lover, commodity or even one’s country—  and the mourning of their absence as the world becomes progressively abstract and symbolic, are timeless and timely inquiries.