Artist Statement

I want to compress time, to exist between the expanse of prehistory and the unruly hereafter, and awaken themes of a shared world through laborious handicraft and experiential, auditory, visual, and performative means. My work entangles species through surreal anatomical play, addressing collective grief in the face of extinction. I mythologize biological systems through material exploration ranging from crochet, wet felting, cardboard pulp, and ceramics to wearable art and song. Drawing from my experience with chronic pain and healing, the physical form holds palpable purpose within the work, an infused emotional boundary between skin and air. I create beings that act as a mirror, companion, chthonic guide, and use vocalization and mimicry to build up an underbelly of fertile accompaniment. The loss of species disrupts communication, the land itself. Remaining birds of an endangered group invent new songs, insects modulate their pitch to be heard over traffic, change in ocean acidification and temperature amplifies the speed in which sound travels through the water. My work is influenced by this translation of sound, the weakening of contact, and the invention of something new. Sound has the ability to cut right to the heart, the ears eternally open in constant vibrational negotiation. I want to remember what’s quietly disappearing, commune with ghosts, and foster material relationships between the hard, soft, and intangible.