Spongebob Digital

The SpongeBob SquarePants television show served as a critical means of escape for me as a child. A way to lose myself in an absurdist and comical world that felt so unlike my own. As I grew older, I found that I still carried strong attachments to many of the residents of Bikini Bottom. They felt real to me, almost like old friends, who’s funny one-liners or unprompted existential insights impacted much of the way I would later view the world around me. My attachment to these characters led me to want to bring them back to life, to make them my own.

Bringing them to life felt like reconnecting with old friends who I hadn’t seen or spoken to in many years. The absurdity of the real world had altered them just like it had altered me. Their respective archetypes within the show fit and reacted differently to that of their new reality. They were fish out of water, faced with learning the rules of their new world, often with disastrous results.

Spongebob Digital Trompe L'oeil Collages. 2022. Digital Collage. Series.. 11” x 17”.