Butterflies in my stomach. Working the graveyard shift. Bed of roses. Idioms are a humorous part of our everyday dialogue. They help us understand life, cope with challenges, and simply bring a smile to our faces on occasion. I bring comical and ironic idioms into two-dimensional form and express the ideas visually through photography. I create miniature tableaux that literally illustrate one or multiple idioms and then photograph these scenes, leaving the viewer to understand the idiom or make a new meaning when confronted with its visual depiction.

I consider my project to be a series of short stories because the idiom(s) used in the prints tell a story from my bizarre constructions. I am working with traditional black and white photography. I am using different materials for my sets, but mostly working with dollhouse miniatures as well as making my own props in order to create a story. Creating my sets and props takes me quite a while, and after I set up the scene then go and shoot it one way and change it up and set it up a different way and take a picture of it that way. Besides the setting the constructed scene up I’m also experimenting with different types of lighting, as well as combining more than one idiom in a scene that gives it a bit of a narrative quality. For example, I utilize both natural light and artificial light to achieve different effects and feelings.