Artist's Statement

Our visual artwork begins as a quest to open spaces where individuals can connect at a primordial level. In that chamber of pure existence, things heat up, divisions melt away, and the result is an altered state of being. We work through a stringent creative processes, relying on collaboration and chaos as cultivators of that space.

In 2006 we began utilizing digital cameras to capture the raw images that are the foundation of our In Search of the Ordinary collection. Digital offers the most suitable conditions for employing our process. Subjects that might ordinarily be passed up by a photographer afraid of wasting film can be captured and introduced immediately to a program for processing the images. Within digital applications a single image can be explored at high speed, pushed to it’s limits very quickly, and passed on to the next collaborator where it can continue to be altered, enhanced, and distorted.

As part of tour established creative process, no one collaborator has complete control, therefore the end result is always an unknown. The process itself dictates the number of original photographs to be captured, the order in which they will be taken, the number of changes that will be made to each piece, and even the location of the shoot. All of the images in In Search of the Ordinary originated in the Sunset District of San Francisco, and each series within the original collection features only a single street corner.

We work with the ordinary, with areas that have been passed without notice countless times, with people and objects that conventional society discards. We use every subject that can be used, no matter how apparently base and push it to extremes by applying attention to form and color rather than content.
Growing up, each of us experienced a pronounced discord between what we were taught and what we ourselves perceived. Ideas that certain things were art and other things were not, based on whether or not they induce pleasant sensations and associations were problematic for us. We have always been resistant to subjective ideals. Our perceptions have not matched what the popular culture preaches and suggests that we should be experiencing.

Working with randomness means that we never worry about results, only the process. When the result is particularly striking it is awe inspiring. That exquisite beauty can be the product of a series of random actions paints the universe as dripping with a fertile impulse to create. We find that this method is liberating, not only for ourselves but for our audience as well.

When people see our work, we like them to feel relief that for one moment, something from outside of the consumer culture is speaking to them, asking them to play. There is more to existence than we allow ourselves to partake of within civilized conventions. Art is the vehicle for making a voyage into uncharted territory and sampling forbidden fruit. Those things that are, those things that aren’t, those things that may never be, are waiting to be caressed by our attention and enlivened by it for one moment. It is a mutual act of creation between artists and audience. We redeem the forgotten and the fallen with that caress.

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