In 2011 I finished my MFA in photography at SCAD. It had taken six and a half years, one staff scholarship class at a time, and finally it was time to plan a show. I'd been having a fun time creating these kind of fable stories with "the mask man" and finished that series of work with a show at Jennifer Schwartz Gallery in Atlanta.
But having a gallery show wasn't really my ambition. For a week in August of 2011, I ran a series of images on a digital billboard over Peachtree Street in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta. Something in the neighborhood of 250,000 people saw my work. I wanted to take advantage of digital technology to get out of the gallery and into people's lives.
The work was intended as a brief, absurd break to the monotony of traffic and sense of inadequacy in advertisement. I wasn't asking the viewer for anything, just showing up and providing a little amusement. It was also a way to draw a lot more attention than an MFA graduate thesis show might normally generate. I got a writeup in Scoutmob and was interviewed on WMLB AM1690 - The Voice of the Arts' Politely Disruptive radio show. If I can find the audio recording I promise I'll share.
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