Sometimes it seems poignant where we draw our own influences. In 2006, I worked at Columbia Museum of Art as Assistant Preparator. During that time I hung a show of garden photographs, of which uncluding two Sally Mann photos: one of the Deep South series and the other of Edward James' surreal garden in Las Pozas, Mexico. Needless to say, I was blown away and my drawings have never been the same. They are very much graphite and charcoal interpretations of Mann's process in toned gelatin silver prints, but of my own subject also in Southern dialect.