Artist Statement

I was raised in rural Appalachian Maryland. My childhood was full of secluded observation: marking the changes in the forest and sky, regularly asking animist spirits for world peace and to help me make friends. While the second request did eventually come true, collectively we have been the subjects of a growing epidemic of isolation and social alienation. As an art educator, I've mentored teenagers who struggle with loneliness, and as an organizer for abolition efforts and teacher unions, I've helped build coalitions when aggressive, better-resourced forces have tried to keep us disconnected. These experiences are related and especially relevant now: as people are forcibly removed from families, communities are fractured and denied agency of their own bodies; while corporate predation continues to harvest our attention as we hustle just to get by. This alienation and violence echoes through our bodies and minds.

In response to these mechanisms of manipulation, my art practice facilitates an alternative attention to our surroundings and each other by proposing unusual modes of relation. I aim to interrupt isolation and find meaning by making the familiar strange. By using banal experiences as reference points – folding chairs, a sandwich bag, plastic straws – I rearrange our shared physical reality in unexpected, sometimes humorous ways. Meaning and connection can be felt through moments of synchronicity – the lunar position of the self, a shriveled banana spooned by a young green banana—and invisible phenomena are made perceptible: the loud sound of the absence of people, an animated spotlight shining on soil taken from a remote ICE detention center. I aim to reveal resonance and significance that is obscured by systems that dehumanize and separate. By proposing inventive ways to engage with our surroundings and each other, I hope to disrupt divisive patterns and invite social and emotional integration.