Artist Statement

The memories frayed,
Leave spaces in recollection

The struggling soul inquires,
Reconstructing the fragments,
Orienting exposed interiors

The new narrative lacking,
Frames anxiety in impermanence

My memories of home are fraught with impermanence and disorder as my family moved from place to place every year or so. My desire to carve out a place of my own in each cramped room with three other siblings often devolved into chaos and disappointment. More often, my grandparents’ and great-grandmother’s homes were places of refuge. Among their old furniture and knickknacks, I found what I was searching for; a static scene that rarely changed and a space that I could exist in. These experiences drive a deeply emotional and psychological connection to domestic spaces. Still, things are never really how we remember them.

Fragments of our experiences are woven together to create an impression of each event that seems true to us. Memory is constructed in this way, and my work manifests this process. Each piece is created from items that have had previous lives of their own (found objects, reworked objects, or even objects that I have lived with). The imprints created during their utilitarian lives are preserved in many ways as I deconstruct them and reconstruct them, entangling their story with my own ideas. These acts obscure function with orientation as the sculptures invoke domestic space, but more than that, they confound that space with the shadowy places of our psyches. The memory of each object’s conventional use reassures us that we understand, but the unsettling absences and useless alignments suggest we pause and contemplate a more exposed reality.