Mystic Shark

This piece was made for an exhibition curated by Chris Doyle (July 6, 1959 – July 22, 2025) called 50,000 Beds. Forty-five artists and artist teams were invited to create short videos, each set in a different hotel, motel, or inn across the state of Connecticut. The exhibition was then on view across three different Connecticut venues: The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Ridgefield), Artspace (New Haven), and Real Art Ways (Hartford).

I opted to go to for Mystic because they had a maritime museum I had always wanted to visit. I would have one night in a hotel there to figure out what to do and make my piece. After visiting the museum, I went to the gift shop and bought a bag of small objects and souvenirs and then took them back to the room to experiment with. I began playing with the petrified shark teeth I had bought, trying to see what it might be like if they were my teeth. At that point, the video that became Mystic Shark happened pretty quickly.

Mystic Shark tries to elicit sympathy through the awkward and sentimental anthropomorphism of this much-feared and mythically vicious creature. Perhaps what we’re seeing here is a “behind the scenes” moment where a tough-guy shark gets ready to do his job (he might work at the aquarium being a shark in a tank, but he lives in a hotel down the road). He's a bit past his prime, but he is trying to live up to our expectations. In the end, he tries to look endearing, and implores us silently to just try to love him a little bit.