Artist Statement

My studio practice investigates perceiving and embracing the ephemeral nature of time and being. I like to think about the age of rocks in the desert, the brief life of a cut flower. Both crystalize the idea that my existence is only a small part of a larger cycle I cannot fully grasp. Change is the only constant. Human memory is not a reliable or consistent document, but a fluid evolution of our perception. Echoing these lines of thinking, resolution is a fragile concept in my studio as my work is often revisited. Each work is a ritual of labor exploring the futile human desire to preserve, filled with tiny notations and efforts to understand, change and observe.

Much of my work is a direct response to my surrounding landscape, studying and intuitively responding to thoughts and memories stirred by color, form, indexicality, and space/place dynamics. I use fluid approaches and shifting combinations of materials to explore the malleability of our perception over time; how recalling and re-constructing memories can become a ritual of decay. Attempting to prolong the life of plants by experimenting with creative acts of documentation and preservation which ultimately result in their destruction creates a tension that is the heartbeat of my practice.

Natural artifacts like magnolia leaves, flowers, or pinecones used in tandem with experimental applications of sculptural media like body casting, plaster, and resin become physical embodiments of change and entropy. As an innate result of using live materials, the sculptures are shape-shifters, slowly evolving in color and texture as they decay and come into contact with other media. With cyanotype photography processes I create indexical documents of passing time and capture echoes of specific places and bodies. I make monoprints with collected natural artifacts which serve as quick, immediate documents of my intimate relationship with nature and it’s deep connection to the way I have interpreted my world since childhood.

The entire studio process becomes a ritual in and of itself, celebrating the ephemeral and mirroring the psychological elasticity of remembering. The works create textured visual experiences that draw connections between human perceptions of the flow of time and the constancy of evanescence.