Description

My work explores how contradictions coexist—how softness and violence, reverence and absurdity, labor and levity can occupy the same space, often in the same gesture. I’m drawn to the quiet overlap of things that we’re taught to keep separate. Rather than presenting opposites in conflict, I explore how they function together, how they support, mask, or sharpen one another.  When using disparate materials and processes, I think about how to destabilize what is considered “precious” and question imposed hierarchies that are traditional, political, and cultural.   I often make sculptures with fresco.  I consider ways to demystify the power and history of its materials by means of poetry and transparency.  The intense labor behind a fresco mural is not always apparent.  It is for this reason that I expose parts of the underlying strata and edges of my frescoes.  Fresco is a medium that is incredibly specific to craft, materiality, and history.  The bare layers that I reveal are there to understand its construction and provide access for others to trace the depth and path of my labor. My frescoes are not bound to an architectural form or site.  Instead, they are free-standing works that are combined with objects and contemporary materials such as insulation foam.  In this break from the ancient traditions of fresco, I look to align the specificity of an ancient practice with artifacts of our everyday grind.  The possibility that we can combine these materials is reflective of the radical shifts we've experienced in modernity.  Once portrayed only on the walls of rarified ancient spaces, the stories can now be shared by the same hands of those who built them. In my recent work, I have been combining sgraffito fresco painting with recycled and cast insulation foam.  The tuxedo cat, the extreme heavy-metal fanatic (also known as a “metal-head” who wears make-up called “corpse paint”), the fire, and the moon emerge through physical scratches and tonal shifts that typify the “modest” painting process of sgraffito.  A tension exists between these images, one that gently builds to a brutal opposition.  It is reflective of the many struggles that we face together.  They are light and dark depictions that work quietly in tandem.  The metal-head and the cat are large and small respectively.  These characters feature many differences, but they are also profoundly similar. Through the process of scratching and pulling dark tone from light, it is important to recognize the common ground that these images share.   History and politics are often described in cycles or loops.  It can be difficult to identify where an observer exists within a cycle as it is unfolding.  Eras of history are largely assessed through the lens of its leadership.  This is an incomplete description of our shared narrative.  Great and terrible acts are catalyzed by leaders.  For better or worse, it is the common people that labor to hold them accountable.  We have been the unsung contributors of history, but we still have agency. While history is often told through grand narratives and powerful figures, I am more interested in the quieter stories—the labor, the repetition, the struggle to rationalize our needs with the needs of others.  The answer is not always apparent, it can simply be lying below the surface waiting to be rendered by our hands and our vision.