I remember my childhood well, at least my version of it. Talk to other family members and you may hear a conflicting story about the highs and lows of traveling with a teenage girl. I believe we all hold on to this idealized view of who we were and how we behaved in our youth, when in reality we were total hormonal assholes. I remember traveling with my family and camping out in National Parks and how much I learned, but my mother and brother share different memories of a moody teenage girl who often came unprepared for hikes wearing flip-flops and complaining when she couldn’t keep up. 

We all share in these common memories of family vacations, huddled in the corner of the campsite complaining that we weren’t able to stay home alone and go to a friend’s party while their parents were out of town. This new series of diorama based works hones in on this often overlooked phenomenon of family vacations with teenagers. Each work focuses on a different National Park, showcasing the beauty of this serene environment and inserts a family dealing with a teenager, all the while attempting to hold on to some semblance of a memorable trip. It’s this difference in scale between the beauty of the environment and smallness of the figures that I use to really show how unimportant all of these teenage outbursts are in the scope of things. These teenagers grow up and see the error of their ways and often even become productive members of society. Each piece is accompanied with a caption that gives the viewer a glimpse at the dialogue occurring during the particular scene they’ve stumbled on to. 

I would like to thank my family for taking me on such wonderful adventures and never leaving me behind. 

This exhibition was on view at Lowbrow Denver in the Summer of 2015.