Artist Statement
Working with ceramic sculptures, objects, and videos, I use symbolic imagery to illustrate how culture constructs the body in relationship to gender, sexuality, age, death, and nature. While remaining tethered to the sociocultural and sociopolitical through research, the work is a forensic endeavor, not diagnostic, nor prognostic. Re-staged rituals recall historical imagery as a vehicle for understanding identity and its meaning. The garden provides a site for reflection on care and mortality while clay acts as an additional material synonymous with the body. At the intersection of sculpting, gardening, and apotropaic ritual, growth and transformation are in lockstep with deterioration. Regenerative processes at play within the work evoke the symbiotic relationship between life, death, and decay. The existential weight of apotropaic objects and ancient rituals is counterbalanced with humor to imagine possibilities within the relationships between the human, non-human, and non-living world. This creates experiences that are playfully absurd, yet melancholic.
