JOEY BROCK

THE TEXAS SERIES As a mixed media artist, I have always explored identity through community, investigating how we construct ourselves through the people and places that shape us. While my previous work focused on marginalized communities, The Texas Series shifts that inquiry inward, examining my own cultural roots and the landscape that formed me. These portraits feature individuals from my own community—those whose daily presence often renders them invisible despite their profound influence on our sense of self and place. Through this work, I seek to challenge the notion that we are ever just one thing. These subjects embody all the facets of contemporary life: history and progress, rural roots and urban realities, tradition and transformation, all woven together into one identity. I am drawn to this paradox of proximity and invisibility—how we often fail to truly see those closest to us, taking our origins and environments for granted. This series is my way of looking back in order to look forward, acknowledging that small-town roots and big-city reality exist as facets of one life, not separate worlds. My process mirrors this conceptual investigation. I photograph subjects from my community, then deconstruct each image into layers and weave and sew it back together through thousands of hand-stitches on translucent mylar. This embroidery technique draws directly from my grandmother and great-aunts' quilting on our family farm—a craft heritage that symbolizes our American patchwork of cultures, the hard-worn marks of history and the healing within. The layered mylar surfaces shift as viewers move around the work, revealing and concealing different facets, mirroring how identity itself is built from fragments we weave together. The process is labor-intensive, requiring weeks per piece, ensuring each work carries the weight of both conceptual depth and authentic craftsmanship.