Bret Woodard

What is your senior thesis?

This stuff I’m making now is like my photographic sketchbook of ideas, in most cases, they’re plans for objects to be made placed in fantastical environments or they’re my memories that have been visually exaggerated just a tad.

What motivated you to start this project?

An idea for an object to build one day but no way to afford the materials. I started to do some
drawings but they didn’t feel right. I wanted to see what this would look like in the real world, or a reasonable facsimile, so to the good ol internet I went and started pulling up a bunch of pictures; landscapes, people, objects, etc. After getting enough on my palette to play around with, I started to collage everything together, and ended up liking the result.

Do you work in film or digital?

Almost everything is digital collage, not really touching a camera at the moment.

Is this a new project or a continuation of previous work?

New project, continuation of previous thought process.

How has your work developed or changed over time?

Aw shit, it changes like almost everyday, to look at anyway. Whenever an idea pops into my head I just start making it and ask as few questions as possible until it’s done. So, visually my work has a tendency to jump around, where as the stream of thought behind it all is pretty consistent.

What artists or works of art have inspired or influenced you?

Mainly just the people around me in the studio or certain faculty I’ve gotten to know and respect.

What kind of response do you hope to get from your viewers?

Any kind, it’s when there isn’t a response that things get awkward…Eiyee.

Is there a certain experience you want people to take away from your photographs?

After looking at my pictures, someone told me that the great thing about photography now is that it can become like the new cartoon, you can drop an anvil on someone’s head or run off a cliff and not fall, it can become it’s own reality. If there is an experience someone gets after seeing this stuff, I’d hope it would be a moment of sharing in my world, like reading a Shel Silverstien book and for a time getting lost up in the fantasy.