In the Exquisite Suburbia series, my work is focused on how mothers living in a demanding world full of family obligations, career goals and beauty ideals are responding to the standard definition of the �perfect woman.� In today�s chaotic homes, multi-tasking mom�s are desperately trying to juggle a multitude of chores and errands while encouraging their children and fostering a happy marriage. Yet through the stressful workweek, mothers are required to maintain a perfect household full of manicured gardens, renovated estates and disciplined children. With so much pressure to succeed, mothers are pushed to live an exquisite life even though much time and energy is needed to achieve a well-balanced home environment. Along with preserving the perfect family, modern women and mothers are also required to remain ageless, young and forever beautiful. With the bombardment of advertising images, Hollywood celebrity magazines and reality shows, people continue to idealize mass media role models and images. Through this series, my goal is to offer a narrative which questions the intentions of suburbia, perfection and living the American dream.
Photography started with a Polaroid camera given to me by my grandfather- a birthday gift from a thrift store. My afternoons were suddenly spent taking pictures of my suburban friends, yellow bedroom, and girly sisters. Growing up in Pittsburgh, the history of Warhol started an enamored fascination in art and with all things commercial. But as I grew older, steel town artists started shaping my photographic ideals. Poetic images from Luke Swank and Roy Stryker taught me how beauty was present even during the Depression. As I studied photography more, artists like Dorothea Lange, Weegee, Atget, and Walker Evans became the masters who defined the straight photographer and the rawness of documentary images. The Surrealist movement with abstracted landscapes, amorphous shapes and saturated narratives, like the works of Salvador Dali, Hans Bellmer and Max Ernst, also provided serious inspiration and started my infatuation with all things dreamlike and the art of unconscious narratives. After studying more art history of documentary photography and the surrealists, my goal is for my current work to reflect both styles while remaining true to a specific narrative. Photography continues to challenge me with every new technology and with every new perspective. My aspiration is to become a unique storyteller who parallels our provocative culture and makes viewers contemplate about our future.
