STATEMENT OF WORK

I transform the cast-offs of our middlebrow consumerist landscape into sculptural works that are playful, absurd, and alluring. Queer in their irreverence, compilation of connoted material, and otherworldly affect, my current work grapples with mending, conspicuous consumption, and the lives of our old nightlights. Fascinated by societal, consumerist detritus and how and when we decide to collect and abandon stuff, I scavenge found, discarded objects and allow their raw forms to direct my practice, considering a dystopian future where these are my only accessible materials. Through tinkering, playing, and mending, I deconstruct the skeletons of household organizers, coat racks, lawn furniture, home exercise equipment, and other found domestic memorabilia, and graft them into cheeky, off-kilter sculptures with kneaded paper pulp membranes. This mending serves as an act of care and sentimentality for the objects I have collected and moreover, provides a framework to frugally navigate and survive our capitalistic context. 

In the relief wall works, I borrow, splice, decontextualize, and re-present diagrams from an array of how-to manuals, DIY books, and outdated science texts, collected from the overflowing shelves at thrift stores. These obsolete diagrams lurk in between jaundiced pages at only a few inches tall and wide but are blown up a hundred times and reimagined as quasi-informative, monumental, tablet-like relics. The glow that emits from many of these works speaks to a duality of light’s connotations, where connections to warmth, comfort, and candle-lit text stand in opposition to the connotations of brazen billboards, neon signs, and warning lights. Evoking humble materials, the works are constructed with a reverence for low brow, craft, and home improvement materials. They are coated in skins of hand mushed, pushed, and massaged paper pulp, while pipe cleaners are shoved into their carved lines. Nestled in these curios are a collection of found plastic material such as a vintage dip and chip bowl, flocked jewelry box insert, and ivory-colored plug-in holiday candle lights. By repositioning and reimagining common plastic objects from the domestic landscape, I propose a future constructed from plastic, the stuff of the mid-20th century’s futuristic fantasies, loosened from its context and free of its less desirable associations.