Artist Statement
I remember creating things in the front yard as a kid: a makeshift house out of sticks, a fort, a play area with items lined up around the edges. In those imagined environments, I could begin to understand the world and my place within it; as an adult, I am trying to do the same.
As I re-orient my physical body in new spaces (i.e. both the interior studio and exterior world) to assimilate stimuli, I make unexpected connections between the place I inhabit and myself. These connections are actualized through the creation of a specific environment— supplemented with sculptural paintings, ceramics, and objects both handmade and found. Utilizing inherent mechanisms of structuring and arranging, I fashion ‘situations’ that are simultaneously idiosyncratic and slightly controlled. In the spaces being realized, material objects are elevated as central actors; placed on chairs, pedestals, shelves and stands—combinations of arbitrary components made meaningful through choice. A home décor planter becomes the base of a new sculpture, wrapped in pink silk and surrounded by embossed pieces of sienna bisque-ware. The floors and walls double as painting substrates; relationships are built up from the pre-existing armature. In this scenario I am both director and passive bystander, I facilitate initial interactions and then allow the work to take on a life of its own. Rooted in an attachment to moments, to the idea of home, or places/things reminiscent of it, I operate in a space of in-between— driven by a desire to grasp something familiar, but not being able to. A dichotomy of fluidity and stillness echoes the paradox of memories we hold dear. I am interested in the residue of these memories; the way remembrances breakdown and become amorphous shapes, colors and sensations that glide through time and place, transforming into signs and triggers. My works flirt with this line of clarity, shifting and evolving with each iteration.
