Artist Statement

My sculptural work, even with its overt use of modern materials and experimentation, actually operates within our most traditional art forms: still life, landscape, and portraiture.

I use these frameworks to examine our relationships with objects and to reorient our understanding of beauty. On the one hand, my work is about elevating the mundane—like water bottles or junk food or bags of trash—and treating these objects as worthy subjects of art. On the other hand, my work is also about recreating natural elements—like roses or trees or even my own head—out of permanent, artificial materials.

I, admittedly, still have a romantic notion that art is all about beauty, and that the best way to explore our ideas about beauty is to underscore life’s vulgarity, too. This is why much of my work exploits the unexpected, visceral tension between subject and material: skulls cast out of food or half-eaten apples cast out of resin or a leaf cut from steel.

My work is ultimately an attempt to reorient the viewer’s perception of ourselves, the world we live in, and the things we consume.