This series of images is the result of an accidental discovery during a collaboration between myself and Rex Lueth, a young visual artist living and studying in Los Angeles.
Although he is only 20 years old, Rex demonstrates an enviable pace and fearlessness in finding himself and defining what it means to be a twenty-something artist during a period in America when anything seems to go. His insatiable appetite and enthusiasm to create and experiment with new people and ideas is contagious.
I met Rex for the first time when I went to pick him up at his dorm at UCLA for a photo shoot. As he laid out the blouses and jackets he wanted to try out for the shoot, I looked around his room and saw the typical residuals of dorm life: half-baked-3am-inspired paintings, a table with an ashtray, bong and incense sticks, a hung over roommate struggling from last night's hallucinogenic debauchery. In that moment, I was struck with a sense of gratitude for my own dorm years being over. I didn't miss those times but I was surprisingly nostalgic for a period in my own life where carving out who I wanted to be was all that mattered.
Using the poppy fields of the Antelope Valley as a backdrop I created a visual snapshot/timestamp of Rex's artistic growth. The resulting images are an exploration of sculpture, by use of fabric +wind +human form, and light.