Smallness
There is something sacred about building small worlds when your body feels large with limitation.
Miniature landscapes do not rush you.
They wait.
They forgive tremor.
They hold still when you cannot.
The Invitation
The Wynn Newhouse Awards were created to recognize artists with disabilities whose work carries both technical excellence and lived depth. The award honors Wynn Newhouse, whose legacy reminds us that disability does not sit outside art history. It shapes it.
Each year, a small number of artists are nominated and invited to submit their work for consideration. The award distributes $60,000 annually among selected recipients, offering not only financial support but affirmation. A statement that disability is not something to overcome in art. It is something that informs it.
The Body
Living with multiple sclerosis has altered my relationship to time, stamina, and control. There are days when my hands feel like borrowed instruments. Days when fatigue steals language. Days when heat tightens everything.
And still, I build.
I kneel over tiny figures. I carve foam into cliffs. I balance light against plastic. I make photographs in spaces measured in inches because sometimes inches feel more manageable than miles.
This year, I was quietly honored to be nominated as one of fourteen artists invited to submit materials for consideration. It feels like standing in a lineage of artists who create not in spite of their bodies, but alongside them.
Continuing
Toy photography is often playful on the surface. But for many of us, it is also resistance. It is continuity. It is a way of insisting that imagination remains intact even when endurance does not.
Small worlds can carry enormous truths.
And sometimes, steady hands are not the point.
Sometimes continuing is.
i love what you said about resistance. my toy photography has long been about injecting peace and kindness into an arena that is most often used to depict violence and aggression. here’s to subverting the paradigms and finding space to be ourselves!
“finding space to be ourselves” is such a wonderful way to put it. Toy photography is so useful for story telling in every variety.
Congratulations! And your words about toy photography are so true – you nailed it!
Thank you so so much! I hope you’ve been well.