(Photos by Kristin Yinger)

So can you explain to me your thinking behind your paper towel photographs? I believe you called them a meditation or study into domesticity?

My best friend and frequent partner in crime, Justin Worhaug, was doing a painting study of vintage mattresses. He and I were toying with the idea of functional items becoming less and less decorative as time has gone on...some of the most common household items used to be so damn pretty! Old lamp shades...shaving kits...glass bottles...there's a certain delicate-ness that seems to have sort of gone away as things have gotten "modernized." So we became interested in the domestic item as a sculpture rather than a functional object. 

What made you interested in doing this project?

I started thinking more and more about patterns and how much I love/hate them. I see myself and everyone else falling in and out of patterns...either physical routines or mental comfort rituals or social agendas. They make me feel relaxed and panicked at the same time, especially the patterns we get into that we project onto other people in our relationships. So I wanted to somehow focus all that fickle energy onto something tangible. Paper towels are pretty much in every home, public bathroom, workplace kitchen. And they're all the same, but the patterns are all different! I started collecting them, getting exciting about finding new ones, having a feeling of comfort if I recognized a certain quilted friend in a new place. They became my perforated buddies.

I noticed on your Tumblr that you have a study about your mother’s side of the family, but by look of the photos, I’m unsure what about your family you’re investigating. Could you tell me about that project?

I mean, honestly, I don't even know what I'm discovering about them yet. I've always had this relationship with paper that I couldn't explain, and I'm thinking it relates to my mother and her mother. They are both extremely organized ladies. My mom's career involves the shuffling of lots of paper work so the presence of office supplies bring up this weird part of my childhood. My grandmother has gotten in this habit of drawing maps of wherever we go together, on whatever pieces of paper are around her at the time. So I started collecting them. Something about her hand-writing evokes this visceral response in me. I'm also collecting stickers she makes to label all her cooking.

Is photography your life? What do you want to do with photography?

Photography is definitely not my life. I actually had a falling out with photography about two years ago, which brought about my relationship with the scanner, which is now my main source of documenting. I’ve developed this weird complex in which I am Point A and I'm looking at Point B through my camera lens which is Point C and creating Point D in a paper print to represent my feelings of Point E. I feel trapped in photography a little bit. I guess I'd like to break that down somehow.

What sort of things are you interested in photographing?

I like photographing things that everybody has a special relationship with but would never think to document and put on a wall and call it “important.”

Is there something random about yourself that you think might add to your creativity or photographic style?

I like making people laugh. Or at least making people smirk. There's not enough laughter in visual art. A lot of artists want to shock people with serious or sad or scandalous imagery but I want to shock people with the idea of how simply hilarious life is.

Reach staff reporter Kristin Yinger here.