Gracious Living is a visual expression of Orange County, California, the epicenter of suburbia and American conservatism. Yorba Linda, the birthplace of Richard Nixon, has a motto that reads “The Land of Gracious Living.” Through video stills, film scans, and photos, Gracious Living tries to document the dual experience of both loving and hating Orange County.

​

I began this project as a documentary film on my friend Chris Gordon about 5 years ago. It started as a conversation about love / hate relationship he had with the area we are both from, and it turned into me misrepresenting his ideas. I ended up scrapping the film project. A couple years later I was staying with Ben Thompson of Desire Press and he got me interested in turning the project into a print book. Everyone I originally told about the film project would always ask when I was going to revisit it. So there is inherently a duality to the project. I want the content inside both to shed light on what it feels like to grow up in Orange County, but also illustrate some of my lack of self-awareness and the lack of self-awareness that comes with living there.

Details : 
Perfect Binding 
10" x 7" 
108 Pages

​

Interviews : Ed Templeton, Rikk Agnew, Jeremy Wray, Sean Bohrman and Lee Rickard of Burger Records, Adam Lentz of Revelation Records, Cara-Beth Burnside, Brian Sumner, Jeremy Stith

​

Published in Association with Desire Press