Statement

My artistic practice explores ideas concerning the fibrous connections between inner life and the outside world with the body as the site of these two differing, at times seemingly oppositional, realities existing in simultaneous continuum. Past work in Biology, Marine Science, and Pathology all come in to play when developing ideas concerning alternate anatomies and floods of the body—the liquid inside, the air outside, and the fine line of skin between. I am also highly influenced by my fondness of folklore and the histories of both sea and sail, all of which were a huge part of my growing up both in the deep desert and along the Sea of Cortez.

 I like to use simple, abundant, derelict materials such as seaweed, driftwood, salt, threads, bits of old clothing, and even sinew and gut. These materials all cycle through ink, clay, and paper, to become prints, books, objects, and installations that adopt adaptations, appendages, secretions, instincts, morphologies, and biological strategies of the natural world while exploring the aspects of the condition of being human. My work serves as examples of how we embody our emotions and by extension, how we embody our environment. Our civilized outside belies the biologically complex human animal on the inside, which can be both beautiful and hideous all at once. The materials I choose, the behaviors and repetition involved in my making, are integral to my exploration of the biology of how I interpret and internalize my surroundings and others. My main motivation for working is to explore how we fill our bodies, our clothes, our rooms, and our world. The struggle between inside and outside shapes our choices and directs who we become and what gets remembered. 

The work itself continually morphs and changes around these themes with these materials. I like to think that the work and myself continue to emulate the processes and pressures of flow, transformation, and evaporation (disappearance).