Chicago based painter & sculptor.

As a person who was raised in the aftermath of childhood parent death, my art practice serves as an expression of grief for both the dysfunctional, formative experiences of my early life as well as the fleeting present moment as I experience it. I use this grief to explore themes such as familial bonds and breaks, death, maternal love, friendship, my budding adulthood, and new-found independence. Much of my work often derives from photos and videos taken throughout my life woven together in a fabricated place and time, where an unimpeded expression of emotion lives and breathes. Throughout the intentionally busy composition, I utilize various motifs regarding color, animals (tigers, jellyfish, my pets), and significant symbolic objects (Matilda the Lamp, the pink couch, windows, playing cards, sculptures, plants) in order to compose a specific feeling: fascination, melancholy, grief. Another such example is my inclusion of rib cages, alluding to rib fractures my mother experienced during cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the minutes before her death. Each element is a key to unlock an additional element within my practice.

My sculptural practice involves the human figure and complicated nature of viewing the human form. Using my hands, I construct the figure, building and shaping curves, folds, muscles, limbs, and facial expressions, sometimes emphasizing the vulnerability that comes with being an object that does not hold a consciousness but is still a body we can rationalize as resembling our own bodies. Through clay as well as casting and mold making materials, these forms come to life, identifiable and immovable, shameless. The sculptures do not tell the viewer to look away but perhaps invite the viewer to look closer, asking one to determine what makes something human and encourages the viewer to confront our understanding of humanity in the vessels we inhabit.