Artist Statement

I approach my materials as a novice. My process begins with simple questions: How does plaster feel in my hands? What will it adhere to? I explore a wide range of materials –  fiber, cloth, concrete, plaster, found objects, and paint – as an early ancestor of mine might have, less concerned with using them perfectly and more interested in learning them through imperfect, embodied use. I bend and break, embracing chaos and improvisation as pathways to discovery and reinvention. In my studio, the abject becomes a sacred means of experiencing my body, and a way of addressing the beauty and messiness of being human. 

Growing up in the 1990s, I was immersed in a culture that promoted narrow ideals for young women: flawlessness, polish, smallness, neatness. In the competitive schools I attended, perfection was the expectation. My art practice began as a form of resistance – a way to rage against tidiness, mastery, and societal pressures to strive and conform. This anti-perfectionist ethos defines my studio practice, where I cultivate curiosity, chaos, and a sort of ‘hand knowledge’ where my body, not my thoughts, drives my creative decisions. My work continually returns to the imperfect body, investigating the tension between external appearances, internal identity, and sensory experience. I deliberately choose materials and techniques that foreground the tactile and sensory. In a contemporary art world often defined by slickness and digital precision, my work is intentionally weird and handmade, celebrating imperfection and serendipitous mistakes. I present these objects, awkward and raw, as an invitation for viewers to confront the wild, untamed nature of human life.

My work builds on (and is made possible by) feminist and queer sculptors whose work pried open the discipline to reveal its subaltern – an unsettled heart that reflected unsettled lives. Chief among my influences are Louise Bourgeois, whose treatment of the human figure showed me how funny and brutal and sentimental and horny and loving art can be. I also look to sculptors in the tradition of Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, and Kaari Upson, whose practices dig deep into the personal and cultural psyche. I embrace awkwardness in the sense that the painter Amy Sillman described it, as “that thing which is fleshy, funny, downward-facing, uncontrollable…against the great and noble, and also against the cynical.” 

What I borrow from my predecessors and contemporaries is not one specific approach, but a set of values – prioritizing curiosity over expertise; process over finish; an open system over a closed one. Ultimately, I want to make a kind of phenomenological record, art objects that communicate the feeling of a life lived, viewed not from above but seen from the inside out.