STATEMENT OF WORK

Once, I saw a butterfly sunning on a stone step, its wings open like a face. As I watched, it slowly folded its wings until only a thin, black line remained.

I believe all forms have the ability to carry emotional and psychological meaning. My sculptures waver between human and nonhuman, figure and landscape, three and two dimensions. The patterns of my life mirror those of animals, plants and the moon, and sometimes it feels like there are no distinctions at all. This sense of wonderment arises out of my interest in old stories and mythologies, especially Japanese ghost stories, where humans and animals mutate freely. They are a direct inspiration for my work.

Although I make sculptural objects, I often think in picture planes like the painter I used to be. I build primarily from clay slabs, drawing cut-lines directly onto the clay so that these drawings themselves become the sculpture. Clay can be both clean or messy; it can be constructed elegantly like architecture, or poked and prodded in sticky lumps. It embodies my contradictory sense of both inhabiting my body and being outside of it.