Friendship Festival 1998/2014

Stereoscopic Digital Painting, 2015

Friendship Festival is a work that seeks to reconcile nostalgia with reality as it relates to coming of age and the environments we mature in. The inspiration for this work stems from personal visits to Fort Erie over a twenty year period. Though each visit has been marked by the more carefree attitude that tends to accompany familial convocation, the emergent social patterns within the town are salient and dispiriting. Fort Erie is not the worst of the Niagara region townships, yet its socioeconomic health is contingent on traffic from cross-border trade; the "just passing through" mentality applies on a corporate and individual level.

The aesthetic of each stereoscopic gif allows for a visual experience halfway between photograph and memory: blurred around the edges, a dynamic tableau mimicking the enduring yet imperfect nature of remembrance.