In the Cracks

A digital collage project.

It’s 2026 and time to get back to all the things.

My life was a little distracting last year with a rather spur of the moment decision to move back to Alaska and making it happen in 3 weeks. And my crazy job was crazier than ever and I traveled way more than I really had time for. It was a great year, but my creative pursuits took a backseat for part of the year and I always feel a little antsy when I’m not creating on a regular basis. I was consistent about collecting source materials for my digital collage work, but not as consistent at actually creating.

My aim for 2026 is to double down on digital collage. It’s the one creative practice that I always come back to because it’s the best of photography & collage combined. If I’m really honest, I love editing my photos as much or more than I like taking them. I just love taking an image and seeing how far I can push it from reality to create the vision in my head.

Digital collage gives me a lot more tools to use with my photos. It’s wildly unpredictable and ideal for experimentation. I do consider myself a photographer but not in any traditional sense of the word.

Most of my photographs now are just another tool to provide the light, lines, color and elements for my collage work. It’s also incredibly portable. I do all of my digital work on my tiny iPhone so I really have no excuses for not being able to create all of the time.

I’m writing this at the end of a 10 hour session in which I created all of these pieces (and never went to bed!). It’s safe to say that I really love digital collage work. It’s been 10 years since I created the first digital collage on my phone and it’s the one creative practice that continues to keep my interest high throughout the years.

This is a new digital collage series that I started working on last night based on some newly found materials combined with some older things I had. Each one is a mix of source material such as:

• My photography images

• Old book scans of diagrams

• Textures & element photos that I collect on a daily basis

• Detail photos of my analog collages

• Other random items on my phone

I’m calling it ‘In the Cracks’.

In the way back time machine, I spent a few years conducting research on alpine plants in the Rocky Mountains¹. I’ve always been fascinated by plants and their ability to exist anywhere- to grow where it seems like things shouldn’t be able to grow. To exist in the cracks. My research involved looking at relationships between plants and how they can be mutually helpful to each other in order to survive in extreme conditions. It was fascinating stuff for me.

In much of my artwork, whether it’s painting, analog collage or digital collage, I find myself always returning to plants. I suppose I do the same thing in real life too as I am always trying to surround myself with as many plants as possible wherever I live. In my artwork, I’m drawn to the strong but somewhat organic shapes and bold colors of collaged plants.

I don’t know the name of the person who posted it, but I saw a random note that someone posted the other day with a few small mathematical diagrams from an old book called ‘Geometrical Psychology’² and a link to the book on the internet archives.

I followed that link and found that some of the diagrams vaguely resembled plants & flowers. Recognizing it as great collage material, it did not take me long to fall down this rabbit hole and voila. ‘In the Cracks’ was born.

There are elements of these that resemble a very large sketching project I was working on about 10 years ago which is a reminder to me that all the work we do is useful, even if we can’t see how at the time. Any creative undertaking helps to hone our design eye, our skills, our taste and our habits. As Austin Kleon says, just Keep Going.

I’m still working to finish that project someday but I’ve created over 1,000 sketches for it and I can see how that work has informed these pieces in a totally subconscious way.

I’m not sure exactly where this project is going but I do know this isn’t the last of them. I have another six weeks before I head home from Antarctica so I think I can create quite a few more in the series before then. I have the beginnings of an idea on what more to do with them once I can print them and add a few analog touches after I get home.

2026 is the year of working in projects, creating more art and getting more tutorials out the door for those that are interested.

Happy New Year to you all and I hope you’re finding your creative magic this year too…

1. It’s not lost on me that I have a degree in plants and a background in plant research, and yet somehow I have spent more than two decades working in Antarctica where there are no plants for thousands of miles. On the upside, we do have a tiny greenhouse that I get to run in my free time:)

2. Geometrical Psychology?? This kind of sounds like a fascinating read.