I was born in Helena, Montana, in 1995—a place that is primarily white and Republican. When I left my hometown for the first time, I realized just how deeply skewed my perception of America had been. The history books from my childhood education painted an idyllic version of the past: using flowery language, minimizing the suffering of enslaved people, and glossing over the violence inflicted on Native Americans post-Columbus’s arrival. A narrative that conveniently omitted wrongdoing. 

Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset uses large-format photography, collage, and mixed media to critically examine the deeply ingrained violence and aggressive masculinity in the fabric of American life. This violence is reflected through personal collages (bars and churches), the buildings we construct, the paving and use of land for transportation of commodities, and the iconography of those we idolize. The sense of the sublime, once celebrated in historical paintings that glorified the West, now feels like hell. Not because our John Wayne ‘heroes’ have run out of bullets, but because this is what remains of a landscape that was stolen, sold, commodified, gentrified, paved over, and burned.