Unlike my previous series of multiple self-portraits, the narratives in these works no longer directly rely on setting to provide a clear interpretation of the actions being performed. Rather, the aquatic
environments limit the viewer's ability to interpret the semi-artificial world on display, an underwater world in which real people could not exist for extended periods of time. Submerged in an underworld that soaks through and covers everyone and everything, muffles sound, and blurs vision, the uniformly dressed boys are reduced to anonymous, bloated figures floating in a womb-like environment. This realm encompasses both playfulness and danger.In "Pool Pushers," the division between these polarities is made literal as
swimmers grounded on land gather around an enclosed circular pool to witness a group of buoyant children being poked and prodded by long poles with nets. Above the water level the onlookers sit in a scene of perfect order and discipline, while below exists a world of confusion, playfulness, and
impending doom. "Floaters" offers one possible view of the scene from under water, as bloated nondescript boys float with the aid of floatation devices in a playful drowning scene. Meanwhile, images like "Attack" depict fully clothed figures entangled in an underwater current of clothes and red
fur-lined coats.

This sense of foreboding tinged with playful fantasy is mimicked in a suite of complex figurative line drawings on mylar. Androgynous figures of indeterminate age float on top of and through each other in a layered composition separated by planes of Plexiglas and semi-opaque mylar paper. The ghostlike figures are caught in free-floating, awkward, transitional states: sometimes their images are doubled; sometimes they seem like as much animal as human.

Optically, the figures fade in and out of each other in a series of tentative lines that read like traces of previous drawings and refer to memory and transition. The figures' relationship to the water's horizon line seems to shift within a single drawing. This horizontal reference point separates air from water and reality from fantasy while it transforms the swimmers' shapes and sizes. This shift mimics the play of light through water, seeming to actually pass through the two worlds and to fracture the figure caught between them.
These absurd predicaments strive to provoke conflicting emotions in the viewer. Scenes which would normally appear threatening, dangerous, or grotesque inspire empathy as well as fear, and ultimately are revealed to be more complex than was first assumed.