Meet the Artist

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Witchy. Gothic. Somatic. Vulnerable. Beautiful. Tender. Playful.

These are the qualities that are prescribed to my work by viewers in every setting.

I create artistic commentary on the current zeitgeist by employing sculpture, ceramics, and paint to create accessible works that distill complex ideas so they are relatable and accessible to everyone.

I create artwork that holds a mirror up to facets of our culture and the current zeitgeist, encouraging reflection and conversation. My work distills concepts and experiences in an accessible way, enticing everyday people to join me in reflection and empathy.

I tackle a lot of wistful, melancholic, and serious themes, but my work is often initially read as whimsical or animated. This is both innate and intentional. I strive to find familiar and unfrightening ways to communicate my narratives, and this makes the work approachable and deceptively playful. Meanwhile underneath, the stories are often heavy, emotional, dark; or sometimes rich, bittersweet, and beautiful.

I am a person who has experienced ‘otherness’ for most of their life—starting as an impoverished child with an invisible disability, then deepening when I later came out as queer, and again when I was gender dysphoric. These differences were doubly confronting to my family who were active members in a pseudo-Christian cult for most of my teens and twenties. Learning to mask, hide, and unveil oneself with great care became part of my natural movements through the world. I use my art to express feelings that were never given safe space in my life, and I think my work reflects that longstanding repression.

As I’ve aged in this female-assigned body, I have observed our world through feminine eyes and an aging female form. I sculpt women because I have lived in a female body all my life, with all the universal experiences that come with it. The female form is inherently political; working with femininity in a time of fascism and industrialization is a radical act. Fauna share the same connotations of vulnerability, intuition, and nonverbal expression, and I often employ animal forms as metaphor, folklore, legend, or abstraction.

To create work that expresses my struggles, grief, and experiences means to lead with vulnerability; each piece reflects me, and begs the question, “This is my reality; can you relate?” For this reason, my art speaks to the soft-hearted, the vulnerable, and those open to seeing beyond the surface of life.