College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

My art begins with making conceptualizations about this condition of being and looking out into the world. A variety of materials have interested me, usually those common to a suburban-based, consumer society. The constructing process involves a careful craftsmanship, but I don’t alter my purchased media so much as attempt to reveal (perhaps through accumulation, repetition, or placement) the metaphors inherent in their humor, oddness, or beauty. References to nature are co-mingled with the pervasive influences of contemporary culture. The work is designed to perceptually to challenge the viewer’s expectations, as well as to raise philosophical questions in regard to physicality and meaning.

Setting up a dialogue among metaphors and different materials, I build a three-dimensional ‘landscape’ of discrete forms within the exhibition space, referring to natural phenomena like water, light, stars and planets, flora and fauna. The sources are ordinary (domestic, do-it yourself, crafts and hobbies), but I would like to generate notions of grandeur, wonder or the sublime through formal decisions, shifts in scale, and placement within the architecture.