I left Missoula, MT in July 2008 to return home to New Orleans after I finished graduate school, earning a Master of Arts in Art History and a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing. I created an installation of painting and interactive video and sculpture for my thesis work based on a non-textual narrative begun in 2006. I thought these characters had archetypical roots, though I invented them from personal iconography. I saw them as personifications of character types in a carnivalesque world – a trickster, a jaded youth, a mediator, and a memorizer. I wanted my audience to identify with them somehow.
 

Just over five years have passed since I left these characters without knowing whether I would meet them again. But, I found this “anniversary” of our togetherness in carnival season an apt time to reach out to them. They are acting now in a narrative about the past five years.

Painting, weighted with the historical baggage of narrative, figuration, the carnivalesque, and especially illusion, still seems like the best way to approach them. Installation brings their world into ours, hopefully suggesting the outward reach this narrative has into (at least my) contemporary worlds. The work is orchestrated with playful messiness, conscious deliberation, and enigma in an effort to reach the viewer and produce inquisitive consideration.

I especially acknowledge David Rodriguez with special thanks for composing the music for this exhibition.