I am beginning a new body of work about crowds—how we're drawn to them, the pleasure we find losing our individuality within them, the terror and joy they can create, and what these profound effects mean for our conceptions of ourselves.

The first work in this series is a large-scale four channel video titled Within the crowd there is a quality, commissioned by Art for Amtrak for the Moynihan Train Hall in New York City, pictured above. Other artists in this series include Derrick Adams, Shahzia Sikander and William Kentridge.

Both of my grandfathers worked for the US Postal Service—one of them in this building (we’ve got stories!)—so this is particularly meaningful for me.

The work was discussed twice in the The New York Times. Critic Blake Gopnik called the work “sensitive” in an essay exploring how video art situates itself on screens in public space, in the context of artists including Christian Marclay and Arthur Jaffa. Also in the Times, in a piece contextualizing this work within my practice, Laura van Straaten described it as "A kinetic cloud of humanity" and "deliberately subtle."

Below are some characters I have created—using traditional cel animation—which become part of the "crowd" in this series of works.

In conjuction, HESSE FLATOW in New York presented in a solo exhibition of paintings, sculpture and videos from the same body of work—also titled Within the crowd there is a quality

Images of a few of these works are below.

The sculpture consists of a selection of my drawings on traditional animation cels for Within the crowd there is a quality, cut out and encased in lucite, fastened with silver clasps, and hung in cloud.

More animation clips and images for this work follow below.

The video above is one of my first tests for Within the crowd there is a quality. Over the course of 30 seconds, the footsteps find synchronization and then lose it.

A key reference for this new body of work is the book Crowds and Power, written by Elias Canetti in 1960, which illuminates the human condition through its exploration of crowd dynamics from prehistoric times through the rise of fascism.

The title Within the crowd there is a quality is a variation of a phrase in this book.

The animation above is from A Marvelous Order (2022)—an opera I conceived with composer Judd Greenstein and former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith.

This piece is inspired by protest. I created animated loops—"walk cycles" is the animation term—and altered their timing so that each pedestrian is taking three steps forward and two steps backward, or similar patterns—a bit like scratching a record. This is what the work of activism so often feels like to me.

This is one of my starting points for CROWDS.