Artist Statement

I am inspired by questions that do not have clear answers. My search for self has been my most challenging inquiry. Being raised between two military career households presented both flux and constancy throughout my childhood. Traumas that I have endured have shaped and haunted me, from losing a sibling to emotional manipulation. There was much inconsistency in living between my parents’ households. Traveling between contrasting lifestyles and psychologies left me feeling like an outsider, from self as well as family. My practice explores the vulnerabilities that I carry from, without embellishment or apology.

The dark side of my personal truth is unsettling, awkward, difficult to look at. Through drawing and sculpture, I make human representations that reveal human resilience. Textures imitate, oppose, and support each other, such as in my recent work Hesitant, where a body of smooth plaster connects a modeled clay head and hands. Juxtaposing different materials represents how human experience is not singular, rather, it is a spectrum of varying modes of being, perspectives, identities, and memories.

My practice is interdisciplinary; I work with clay, plaster, and mixed media. Material transformation, as well as layering two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms, allows the work to extend and contract in space. By drawing on form, I create illusion to conflate what is tangible and intangible. This relationship of illustrating mass and volume on a form depicts how overlapping states of being may manifest.