STATEMENT OF WORK

This work focuses on the ways we use ritual, spirituality, and myths to create meaning and connect to that which is unknown. My paintings and sculptures use a symbolic and abstract language to channel ideas of creative energy and the ritualistic utility of art. The sculptures act as devotional objects while the paintings are an incantation of the energetic spirit. Touch is venerated in this work; learning and making with one’s hands is held up as sacred and essential.

The figure/finger/phallic symbols that are signifiers of generative creation, birthing a fecund world and creating a mythic narrative about generation and the creative act. The main form, which I will call a "totem" or "votive" (it functions as both), shifts from male to female but also consistently symbolizes fingers. This explores the connection between sexual procreation and the activity of making. The totem represents the spirit of fertile creativity. The materials of silk and clay bring together two opposites: one heavy and still, the other light and moving. Just like the bringing together of silk and clay, I seek to bridge and blur the separation of male and female. I am also interested in the invention of the spiritual in secular society.

A thread that has run through multiple projects concerns the way that people imbue objects with the power to hold memory, tie the living to the dead, and connect past to present. A common object becomes a sacred vessel, often passed down through generations. The object becomes one of devotion, turned into a votive. This, to me, is a metaphor for the act of making art.