Contemporary Artist

Making art is a way of life, a way of being. This process of expression and the fabrication or transformation of space is reflexive to me. It is not something that I do, but who I am. My process functions around and within my studio. That place is a nexus of sorts, a synaptic intersection or node where my conceptual thoughts, emotional reactions, and technical elements coalesce into new breathing forms. It is here that my physical and emotional environments combine. This space of vulnerability, fear, safety, curiosity, and warmth is my nest and a place of incubation. Each element that I bring into it is an egg that I must care for until it hatches and becomes something new. In this manner, things like bugs, textiles, furniture, drywall, cigarette packs and other seemingly mundane or ordinary objects are nurtured and then recontextualized into expressive forms. This process asks me to deeply consider each element by comparing and contrasting both their physical characteristics and their sociocultural or symbolic inclinations. As an artist I seek to speak through my materials not to bend them to my will. In my work, bugs are for sale, milkcrates become skeletons with jute twine ligaments, and each pack of cigarettes holds twenty memories.