About

I gather found and foisted objects connected to childhood, comfort, and celebration from neighborhood curbside piles and friends. I transform them, along with banal and functional domestic objects, into otherworldly sculptures that embody themes of struggle and determination, materialism and connection, and layers and accumulation.

In my work, as in many family homes, material and aesthetic contradictions abound. Patinas on antique heirlooms rub up against unnatural candy color facets of mass-produced plastic toys, the satin finish of mid-nineteenth century upholstery fabric, collections of soft white cotton pads, and a whole world of other surfaces. Soft heaps of old sweaters and stuffed-animal pelts are lashed together with strings of burnt out lights. Plagues of ribbons and Easter basket grass ooze from crevices. Vines, covered in a lichen-like froth - formed from clusters of disposable novelties - climb and overtake scaffolds assembled from stacked, broken, and twisted furniture and fixtures.

Within these sculptures I often combine sacred and celebratory forms inspired by temples, altars, tiered cakes and ice cream sundaes, with images of microorganisms, microhabitats like webs and nests, biological and botanical systems, particulates, and speculative biomorphic or supernatural entities. These complex and layered forms imagine and reveal the unseen peripheral, subliminal, and energetic presences covertly lurk beneath the surface of material gestures or that may be harbored in the corners of our homes, gardens, bodies and minds. Built around a scaffolding made from dismantled furniture, bases and stands, these objects that were meant to provide structure and stability now serve as off-kilter armatures and porous cages.

Developing through improvisational way-finding, rather than premeditated engineering, I create these bewildering sculptures through integrating processes of grafting, weaving and wrapping in order to explore the tangled desire to conceal, heal, fester in, and redirect emotions through material objects.