This series of portraits is based on photographs taken from May 2003 to roughly the present. Some of the source photos were staged, and others were snapshots taken spontaneously by friends and acquaintances. I worked intuitively, selecting images that felt mundane but open-ended and evocative. They might seem disjointed when viewed collectively if not for the identical striped sweatshirts worn by the subjects. Distinctive and brightly colored, the recurring article of clothing implies a shared background or common purpose among the people depicted, giving them the appearance of cartoon characters, models in an advertisement, or perhaps even devotees. However, neither a punch line nor a message ever materializes, and the contradictory images don't fully coalesce into the recondite narrative that seems to be suggested.
Nonetheless, while making the work I couldn't resist mentally filling in the blanks for myself, imagining the subjects as characters and fantasizing a story for them to inhabit. Initially, however, I was more interested in the reasons that a viewer might or might not organize the thematic and pictorial elements of these works into something meaningful and definite than I was in what that 'something' might be. I first and foremost wanted to explore the factors that contribute to an appraisal of triviality or significance.