Artist statement

Most summers when my aunts were together I’d join them on the floor around a suitcase full of thrift finds. Each piece was shown and its history recited. This concluded with all the item’s flaws and suggestions of what could be done by the industrious taker.

I’m that sort of taker, for these hand-me-downs, and for my cultural baggage. The contexts I fabricate for my sculptures will never fool an audience carrying similar baggage. But they do take on a holy, aloof air because I feel a responsibility to relate the Home Ec lessons and sweaty family picnic lore at length like my aunts do and lay out the contradictions in footnotes. I’m still making them on the floor transgressively grafting in brand new materials from Home Depot and Joann Fabrics with the old ones rich in patina. 

The archivist in me worries I misconstrue the contexts with this combining. But the sculptures also feel approachable this way. I’m taking my ancestors’ ideas in a bit, cutting up their fears, throwing their truisms back into the suitcase to fess up to and purge for the next generation.