Mid-40-something-ish artist/designer/photographer.

I am an historian, a hunter-gatherer, a miner, and a trash collector. Art history books are gold mines for me. I find a peculiar lyrical quality to old anatomy and medical drawings. I can become teary-eyed over certain botanical illustrations, wallpaper designs, bird prints, astronomy maps, travel documents, the pattern of handwriting in a letter. I prefer the patina of use and age—smudges, the stain of cellophane tape, a child’s doodles in a book, margin notes, mold. The crackle of oxidized paper with its palette of yellows, browns, and golds; the mottling of mildew or the soft bleaching of sunlight; clumsy, off-register printing are all special joys to me.