STATEMENT OF WORK

My work explores the tensions and contradictions that shape identity, memory, and perception. As an immigrant from communist-era Romania raised in the ornamented sprawl of suburban Florida, I exist between worlds—between austerity and excess, mythology and fact, survival and comfort. This in-betweenness is both a site of inquiry and a source of creation.

I draw from historical forms—monuments, ruins, and decorative motifs—not to replicate them, but to question the ideologies they carry. Ornament becomes a tool for reflection: a language of illusion, power, and embedded narrative. By deconstructing these maximalist details, I reveal the scaffolding behind the spectacle and the hidden frameworks that shape how we remember, value, and mythologize.

My sculptures are layered accumulations of fragments, found materials, ceramics, and cast-off objects already charged with meaning. Through an intuitive process of collecting and embedding, these elements form a broader system of remembrance.

What began as an instinctive impulse to hold onto past spaces crystallized into a way of thinking. I refer to my work as “time capsules”: vessels for memory and transformation, containers of personal history reframed through making.

My process is intuitive and incremental, guided by material response and conceptual intent. As the work evolves, it absorbs traces of my past and my unconscious. Each piece becomes a sealed diary—imprinted with my psyche, layered with contradiction and offered as both artifact and mirror.