Artist Statement

For my entire life I have enjoyed the process of collecting.  This has, without a doubt, carried over and become an important part of my art and myself as an artist.  The idea of taking many small parts to make a whole really makes a lot of sense to me, and in doing so, the process becomes just as important as the finished product. 
    I strive to make people look at things in a new way by turning the most mundane and ordinary into something new and unexpected.  I like people to make people question their societal boundaries, the labels society has put on things, and what makes them feel uncomfortable. 
    I often explore subjects that are corporal or of the physical world, such as explicit sexual forms, animals, insects, and death.  In my creative world I rename things already known to make people see them in a new way.  I give what many would call mundane objects an air of importance by putting them in a different context, making them sacred and special.

Five Inspiring Artists

1.  Egon Schiele

2. Tracey Emin







3.  Marc Johns







4.  Sally Mann







5.  Ralph Steadman

Five Cities I Want to Visit

1.  The number one place that is on my list of places to experience is Santa Clause, Indiana.   I'm seriously like a little kid when it comes to holidays, and I love all things Christmas.  This is a town where it is literally Christmas everyday. Everything street and store in the town is named for something Christmas related.  Residents keep their houses decked out all year long.  When kids send letters to Santa, this is where they end up.  This is my kind of place. I'm seriously that into it.

2.  Another place I would love to visit is Amherst, Massachusetts.  There is one thing that makes me want to visit this small town, and that's the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.  I'm a childrens book fanatic and the fact that there is a whole museum dedicated to childrens book illustrations is just awesome.  The museum was created by Eric Carle, well known author and illustrator of some of my favorite childrens books including famous stories like The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  I could spend a week in this place, and probably another week in the gift shop.

3.  Also in Massachusetts, another place I would like to visit is Henry David Thoreau's cabin on Walden Pond in Concord.  Oh, the inspiration!

4.  I'd love to visit Vail, Colorado.  Like most people who visit Vail, my reason is for the slopes.  I've skied for a long time and dabble in snowboarding as well.  I had a friend who moved to Vail to be a snowboard instructor and it's been on my list of places to visit since then.  Look how beautiful it is! Those slopes!!!

5.  Lastly, I would like to visit Anchorage, Alaska.  This city is considered one of the best place to see the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, which is something I hope to see before I die.

  

Glycerin Soap

For this project we had to melt down glycerin soap, build paper molds, and encase objects inside.  The objects we chose had to work together in some way and we also had to pay attention to how they were displayed in the end.

In the end I chose to use objects that were all somehow bird related.  I used acorns, nesting material, feathers, birdseed, sticks and leaves, miniature birds, and a real worm from my compost pile.  I thought about making a realistic looking nest for the soap to be displayed in, but then decided I wanted to play up the fact that it is soap, and soap is something you would buy in a store or give as a gift.  I ended up putting the finished product in a basket, neatly arranged, with some dried grass and twigs to make it resemble a nest as well as a gift basket of sorts.

Thrift Store Narrative

This was an assignment where we had to collect random objects from a thrift store and then come up with some kind narrative to support our finished sculpture.  we were encouraged to alter the objects, set them up in different positions, and basically do whatever we wanted to get our story across. 

The objects I chose to focus on were porcelain dolls.  My idea came from the fact that as I child I used to believe that my toys were real and that they would come to life whenever I left the room.  I was inspired by the story of The Velveteen Rabbit in which the love and imagination of a child could make a toy come alive.  But what happens when toys break or kids grow up?  I imagined that these toys had to recreate themselves, rebuild themselves into something new.  One doll is seen sewing the other one together, holding the needle and thread.  These new recreations would never be as nice and beautiful as the originals because they lack the love and imagination they once had.  I stitched the phrase "even things die" onto a piece of paper and surround the modified dolls with things that were once living and are now dead such as the rat skeleton, the turtle shell, a dead lizard, and a dried up dragon fly.  My idea was to use these once living specimens along with these "dead" toys to show that yes, even things die.

Automata

For our next project we were to make a wooden mechanical toy.  I struggled with this assignment because it was a little out of my comfort zone.  I don't usually do a lot of planning.  I'm the type of person that welcomes happy accidents and spontaneity.  With this project, however, there was a lot of trial and error and many cardboard mach up attempts before I could even think about tackling a working toy in wood.