Artist Statement

As an artist and as a person, I have struggled with making connections. Homeschooled from birth, I spent my formative years in front of the big box television set, learning everything about the real world from something inherently fake. My way of interacting with the world was hinged on plot devices and character tropes that seemed to garner friends and excitement in my little fictional paradises, but unfortunately didn’t produce the same results in the Sunday school classrooms. I became disconnected… out of touch. My Expressions of Self work explores a limbo between the gender binary and a pressure to choose one or the other, when all you want to be is neither. I have been trying on and off to communicate this experience through painting, sculpture, and installation.

Whether self-imposed or involuntary, I spent a lot of time alone, trying to figure out what I was and what I wanted. I dissected my loneliness and made a lot of paintings about touch and connection during a time when I didn’t want to be looked at.  Hands are a symbol I use often in my work to convey touch, connection, labor, and a reflexive little peace sign to throw up any time someone talks to you (which is totally a defense mechanism. It’s a response without responding so I don’t have to engage with people).

I make big things. These are big feelings. Scale is important in my practice because it is the only way I know how to make people pay attention, because it’s what got me to pay attention. Nothing hit harder than seeing someone get the shit kicked out of them on a thirty-foot screen in a dark movie theater. Bright colors, recognizable icons, and varied and interesting textures are what drew my eye to the visual aspects of film and television; I like to mimic those attributes in my work. I put art history icons in my work because there is something interesting about trying to recreate great works and master craftmanship with elbow grease and literal trash sometimes. I’m trying desperately to be part of something that either doesn’t exist anymore or never existed in the first place.