I am a narrator.
I’ve known this since I began keeping a journal at age 10. I was full of words and images, and was convinced early in life that my purpose was to interpret the true stories of what was happening around me. To whom was I telling these stories? It didn’t matter. I was on a mission to gather information and document the world as I saw it—my room, my backyard, my school. My family and friends became the characters in an elaborate production that never ceased to inspire me.
As I moved through school it was clear I was meant to be a documentarian. I worked at the local paper, and my numerous hobbies were experimentation in every type of medium. How would this story work in pictures? In an essay? In dialogue? As a serious, ambitious investigator, I was anxious to find my voice.
Where your talents and the needs of the world meet, therein lies your vocation.
I attended an excellent private university where my teachers cultivated this passion. In learning to identify and speak to different audiences, my storytelling methods came together in thorough, creative plans. My ideas were endless as I strived for more adventure and more material—one must experience the world in order to become its voice. With an ordinary life I could write an ordinary story, but an extraordinary life would give me the tools to create a magnificent opera. So I left for New York City eight days after finishing school.
In the years since leaving, my work has grown through such experiences. I embrace each opportunity to portray my surroundings in new, imaginitive ways, and most of my work centers around this theme of feeling at-home in a foreign place. One’s own concept of home and away, after all, lies soley in perception.
