In this iteration of my career, the genus is broadly storytelling, and the species are the various forms and hybridized genres that I explore. I work in a public-facing lab environment, showcasing my projects and processes and sometimes their progress. And sometimes, I make progress, too.

Much of my work has a “meta” factor — a tendency that has dogged my career. Whether it’s a novel, a film, or a newspaper column, I often try to animate it with its sense of self. It knows what it is and squirms under the microscope of its self-examination. The off-register CMYK, the critically-placed typo, the inherent wabi-sabi of any imperfect medium that results in art that doesn’t disguise the process of its own making. Rather, It revels in it, shows its seams, and, in so doing, is somehow “conscious” of itself.

This approach suggests that the work is always actively being made before its audience (once technically and forever again experientially) and invites their suspension of disbelief as a kind of complicity, if not collaboration. The painting has eyes that move, but only if you look at them.

— Daedalus Howell, 2024