I believe art is an everyday routine that critiques the relationship humans have with their environment. Art is the mixture of play and terror; play activates concepts and attitudes that open possibilities. Most of my work confronts types of facades we create and explores literal and emotional facades through a wide range of materials. With special attention to the mundane or unseen, and looking specifically at definitions of regional American culture, relationships to ones own landscape, and community or surroundings, (including architecture, consumer goods, domiciles and signage) visual markers become adaptations through language and cultural categorization, whereby collections/objects are meant to test understanding of memory and assign value with words.
In the studio, a range of media are used to create environments or installations through emotional play. Manipulating language (playing with words), painting Disney characters, covering architectural facades in glitter, photographing domiciles and purchasing consumer goods of the same color are reimagined realities to categorize time.
Covering my body in a stamp that reads, Hell No, using snapchat filters to perform artist lectures, teasing art critics and academic structures, wearing masks, throwing pity parties, serving bologna, a painting that says The Show Must Go On, twenty five running feet of glitter or glitter on anything that will stand still, or even two very large hand forged hinges perform my relationship to modernism and its overplayed masculine, bacchanalian expectations, and are frequent and repetitive tropes in my studio explorations.
The disruption and fusion of art and life have been a central focus of my graduate work as well as defining values and expectations of a production.
While play, intuition, fun and humor are all central aspects to this performative development, theatre, institutional critique, masking, and persona/alter ego speculation are all central and serious considerations throughout the gestures in my praxis. As well as trust and communication, honesty with ones self and care for ones immediate surroundings are inevitable outcomes.
I believe artistic ideas, however absurd, are serious and activate imagination in others. Work functions to see multiple viewpoints, perspectives and possibilities. The absolute joy and terror of art making is undoubtedly something I will always do.
Thank You.
Sending my condolences during this global pandemic.
