A few years ago, I picked up the book "Animals Looking At You" by Paul Eipper from a used bookstore and it reminded me of when I used to frequent the Memphis Zoo, when I lived just a few blocks away and could ride my bike there on "free for locals" Tuesday afternoons. I've lost my taste for visiting zoos, but I continue to think about animals and our relationships with them, in a similar way that Eipper wrote about his own thoughts on the subject back in the early 1900s. Something that entranced me in the same way many storybooks have captured my imagination is the way Eipper used images with captions to tell unusual, and sometimes confounding stories.
I've used this juxtaposition of text and image in my work for a few years, and this past summer I've decided to take it in a new direction. Instead of just referencing the idea, I've pushed my prints to become something like a "fake-out", where the work looks like it could be a page ripped from a book. I've titled my "book" Beasts of Burden, a phrase that returns to my work often. As of now, I've completely two prints in this new series: Cat's Cradle, where a young boy is playing the string game with a stag, and Elephant's Rope where you meet an elephant and her keeper. A third, about polar bears, is in the works. These two are now available in the shop under "New Work!"
