In its broadest sense, my work aspires to encapsulate the idea of place, as intuited through the fleeting impression in the mind of the casual passerby.
In each new place I live, I find my work adapts and accommodates to that place’s own character, eccentricities and nuances, refining and honing itself over time.
But more than just environment itself, my work seeks to invoke a feeling of sonder, to explore each new displayed world in snapshots: peering through the windows of different stories and diverse experiences with a certain detachment.
In terms of my craft, about six years ago I began an intensive investigation of the figure-ground relationship. I looked for ways to separate individual subjects from the places they typically “lived,” and to reassemble them later on. I have done this by reimagining the traditional interpretations of two- and three-dimensional media.
My years of making sculptures, drawings and paintings have resulted in my intense curiosity around the possibilities inherent in 3-D representations of typically 2-D media – both small and life-size. I have spent the last few years exploring these possibilities, through hanging drawings suspended from string, or creating 3-D paintings by taping together watercolor paper and reinforcing it with cardboard. I use these simple and playful media to complement the concepts of whimsy, pretend and world building that is foundational to my work.
Currently, I am creating 2-D cut-out paintings and fastening them to a display wall, to serve as backgrounds that frame the 3-D objects, figures, or animals in my piece’s foreground. This installation approach creates an illusion of depth, but also like traditional painting or drawing, exists in defined boundaries
As my curiosity for new materials continues to evolve, so in turn does my work. Each new material I employ over time – from black plastic, stuffing and cardboard to most recently elastic string and clear plastic -- enables me to build on older ideas, revisiting them in ways that allow for new methods of expanding on the same core story: the story of experiencing and seeing the various lives of the world, without analysis or judgement. The story of moving through space.