Big

3 wide by 4 high grid of separate multicolored and noisy images that combine to make one image of a toothbrush. Overlay text reads 'This is BIG to draw your attention to my work' — Big

Close on the upper right panel 'BIG' which shows the lettering has some sort of texture — Big (detail)

Big is text. Big is process. Big is chaos. Big is big.

As a photographer, I feel that there is a “right” size for every image, and it’s not always “as big as possible”. I started thinking about why artists would make large pieces. How could I make a piece that would be as big as I could possibly make it and still have it be “right” size?

Starting from a single medium format film negative, I scanned it at high resolution and brought it into Photoshop to color it. Then I loaded the resulting file into the open-source digital audio editor Audacity, and used its controls to “glitch” the image — adding intentional but not entirely controllable noise and other effects.

After adding the text (and enhancing it with a scanned texture), I then used another open-source program (ImageMagick) to chop the file into twelve segments for printing (on metallic paper) and display.

Big is the largest piece I’ve ever made. Big is also not quite ready for its own gallery on this site, because it really needs to be photographed in situ. I could put the digital files in, but I’m not sure that they represent the piece well. I’m hanging the piece soon, we’ll see how it goes!

The piece hanging from 2 light stands. With the support it is about 7 feet wide by about 10 feet high. I'm standing in front of it for scale. I'm 5 foot 6. — Big (scale)

View the individual segments in the project gallery.