Dominance Diaries (2021-ongoing)
Dominance Diaries combine autobiographical and critical writing,found images, personal and political histories, different publishing, book layout, and design styles to tell stories that bring individual and collective histories together for a series of zine-like pamphlets. The framework has been to deconstruct my inherited traits of cultural dominance (being white, male, straight, cisgender, growing up Christian, speaking English, middle class, living in suburbs, coming up in the Midwest United States). Each diary intersects writing with imagery from a trove of childhood culture artifacts such as Star Wars and Marvel comic books, Christian education ephemera, family albums, and other photographs.
Every so often I mail out another issue from the series for free to about 80 friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. It has been a source of connection, vulnerability, correspondence, and cultural discourse on themes ranging from whiteness, parenting, art criticism, political affiliation and anxiety, cultural and artistic appropriation, amongst other subjects.
Luke overlays images of Luke Skywalker on the book from the Bible with mini-essays about parenting a young white boy and the religious-like identification people have with the movie franchise.
Basement Boys (no.2), appropriates Marvel and other comics to tell stories about men and boys attempting to draw power from self-isolation.
Masters (no.3) appropriates He-Man toy comics and a bit by comedian Marc Maron who humorously ties the toys to the election of Trump as well as the privileging of superhero stories in the marketplace.
Words and Flesh (no.4) examines my indoctrination into Christianity as a kid and its hold on various aspects of public life.
Every Car (no.5) is an expansive photo album of every car I’ve owned interweaving stories of internalized racism, patriotism, amongst other subjects.
The Paradox of the Arrow (no.6) is a do-si-do in two parts that connect how Manifest Destiny and its consequences get affected in me, education, and life in Western NY.
Pinkboy (no.7) addresses growing up male in the Midwest and my once obsession with the writer David Foster Wallace who killed himself in 2008.
Wallace (no.8) is about an English Bulldog I owned and named for the writer. It is about companionship and power and draws comparisons between unethical dog-breeding and the insanity of racial hierarchy.
