(bright music) - A lot of the work that I'm interested in is kind of balancing the differences between analog and digital work.

I'm so interested in the idea of simulations.

I like adding confusion to the image.

And it kind of helps create that pause to really consider what it is that we're looking at.

One of my favorite things is going to Home Depot or Lowe's or something like that.

I love going to their flooring department and taking a look at all of their...

The free samples that you can look at.

I love that it's a ceramic tile trying to look like wood or trying to look like brick.

I've always found that just really fascinating.

So that's kind of what I like to do in my own work, is show a representation of something.

But it's not actually the thing.

I might be the only one that finds that fascinating, but I love doing it.

I love looking at materials and really thinking about, is that actually the material that we're looking at or is it a simulation of something else?

My dad is an architect, so I think a lot of that has to do with my interest in art.

I always grew up seeing all of his drawings, all of his scale models.

It was just something that I was always used to seeing visually.

So I'm really interested in high contrast, hard geometries, hard lines, things like that.

(upbeat music) Usually, I start my process with an image that I've scanned, like wood, cardboard, things like that.

Or recently, I've been getting into using my own photography.

So a lot of the images that you might see recently are from a trip that I went to in southern Utah, so a lot of Antelope Canyon.

When I take these images and start to play around with them in Photoshop, you see a lot of computer-generated things.

So I love using drop shadows, I love using different types of gradients, different types of patterns.

Even though it is digital, I still think and work like a painter.

It might not be apparent in the work, but when I'm in Photoshop, playing around with layers and colors and erasing and adding, that to me is a very painterly thing to do.

And then it's important for me to digitally output into a physical material so that it goes back into the real world.

It casts a real shadow.

I'm not trying to hide the fact that these are digitally made, and some of my works in particular, that kind of grid that you see in the back of Photoshop, that pops up a lot in my work.

I think it's quite fun.

(gentle music) I think that's really important when you need to make work.

If you're not having fun, then what are you doing?

But I think there is a deeper meaning to it.

I think a lot about this idea of the infinite scroll.

Think of Instagram, for example.

You can just spend all of this time scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.

And for me, that's fascinating and terrifying at the same time.

My work, for me, it's a way to create a pause, to kind of see all of these elements, take a step back.

We aren't looking at the real thing.

We're looking at a representation of the thing and we're so used to it.

And again, it's incredible now with everything happening in AI and computer-generated work, but it's also good to recognize the real as well.

We're so used to looking at representations of things that in my work, I like to, again, create that pause.

We are at 68 Second Street, Second Street Studios, and we also started The Hallway.

(upbeat music) It is quite literally a hallway in a brownstone in downtown Troy, makes for very interesting exhibitions.

It is a small space, but it's a fun space.

We thought like, what can we do a little bit more to help other artists?

It's really hard being an artist.

A lot of people have a nine to five, whether that be teaching or something completely outside the field.

Like for me, I bartend, that's my nine to five.

So we wanted to be able to provide space for people to show their work without charging these huge fees.

And we wanted it to be artist-run.

We wanted it to be a little alternative, a little fun.

So yeah, we opened in January 2020.

We are open the last Friday of every month for Troy Night Out, generally like 6:00 to 8:00.

We have about five shows a year.

We are fully booked for this year, which is really exciting.

And a lot of the time, we do an open call.

So it's always free to apply to The Hallway.

That's really important for us.

This is the second annual "Artist Behind the Scenes."

This show is really, really special to me.

I came up with the idea a year ago, mainly to expose the fact that so many of our art institutions, galleries, museums, shops, they're all run by artists.

A lot of them have a nine to five.

And working in these environments, as someone who runs a studio, sometimes your work never... You don't have the opportunity to show your work a lot.

You're so busy trying to help others.

So the point of the show was to be able to kind of give back to the artists that are running these spaces for us.

So this round is a couple artists from Albany Barn and a lot of artists from Arlene's.

And it was so much fun to work with them.

They were so excited to be a part of it.

We can have an opening of 70 people coming in, which is so much fun.