Integrative Seminar 2 · Spring 2026

Self-Portrait, in Five Strips

Hand-built wooden frame, metallic silver paint, five cut photographs. 14 × 16 in.

Five photos (me, friends, New York, home in Georgia, nature) cut into vertical strips and set into a frame I built by hand in the wood shop. I cut the wood to size with a Japanese hand saw and chiseled the lap joints myself, then mitered a thinner interior border at 45 degrees and fixed it on with nails and screws, drilling pilot holes first so the thin wood wouldn’t split. The metallic silver paint makes it read like a metal or gilded frame.

I've got a lot of sides that don't obviously belong together, and this was about showing they still add up to one person. It started with a question from a seminar essay about Alys Beach, Florida, a town so deliberately curated it starts to feel strange: how much of who you are is self-generated, and how much did you just absorb from what's around you? I could've bought a frame instead of building one. I didn't, because making the thing myself is part of the point.