Bio

Artist Statement

The majority of my work revolves around personal experiences. I strive to give the viewer insight into the way I view the world as well as how I have responded to my environment or the way that my life has affected me. Artistic expression becomes my outlet for things that I, and others, often keep hidden within myself. It is the way in which I am able to release, communicate, and examine those things that were once kept private. I seek to make work that the viewer can associate or connect with and to which they can relate their own personal story. Intimate narratives are also explored often through various material studies in my pieces. I try to utilize specific mediums as direct inspiration for the execution of an idea.

Much of my work, and an underlying theme of many of my pieces, involves an exploration of the difference, and often conflict, between inner and outer personality and expression. One side is what I choose to express to others-a more emotionless and tightly controlled demeanor. The other side is what I choose to keep hidden in my own head-much more expressive, articulate, or passionate behavior. In this work I have used 2-d mediums like drawing and painting to both abstractly show contrast and to realistically depict actions or create scenes that could never occur in real life but that truly capture the way I feel. Juxtaposition has become a large part of my work as I feel it is so unknowingly common in my life. I have continued the use of contrast in my investigation of the process of physical repair of domestic objects. Broken objects fixed in unconventional or embellished ways have served as a metaphor for negative or hurtful events or experiences and the healing process and evolution that follows. In both of these concentrations of work, contrast and juxtaposition play a significant role as they are a large part of these concepts and my life. In this work I have utilized ancient or long-established ceramic and fiber methods of mending in new and different ways to act as representations of experiences. In these pieces, the process becomes a central focus. I have continued with my interest in process in my recent work in which I have explored the use of collage and making intuitively. The piecese share something about my life in a more abstracted way so that the viewer does not get the whole story, but can piece together certain features or take different elements (imagery or interaction between figures) and create their own idea of a story or interpretation of the pieces. I have also been experimenting with non-objective, completely abstract and instinctive creation to convey specific mental states and create an environment in which the viewer can experience what I feel. I use random, expressive forms combined with printed patterns to again replicate both the chaotic panic and the calming consistency that is experienced during social situations that induce anxiety.