Artist's Statement

A river is in a constant state of duality. It is at the mouth and delta at the same time and in between it flows, evaporates, and collects continuously. As a result, it is always in the past, present, and future, and like the river, the entire universe consists of the same fine balances. Everything in is composed of energy and matter. As something is made another thing is demolished. One state of being begins because another state ends. An organism is simultaneously alive and dying, and the path in between these things is a circle never ending and never broken. It is just a shift of existence.

As a result, nothing that we have is permanent. Our possessions and man-made constructions are transient, falling apart before our eyes. Even our bodies are just a temporary container for our life, vessels composed of energy and matter clumped up into cells and organs. They do not belong to us. Eventually, they die and decay, just as everything does, changing shape beyond our control.

As an artist that is also a trained biologist, I believe it is my role to explore these dualities through my work.  I often use temporal materials to illustrate the dynamism of our world and in particular they reference decay and erosion of reality. It is the embodiment of the shift between matter and energy.   My work dances between life and death, funny and serious. 

In each piece or body of work, I choose my concept first and then choose the medium. Often times I come back to two materials in particular — paper and fabric. I enjoy that both have the abilities to be soft, strong, high art, or crafty.  

In my performance I show the human element of release and struggle, escaping or breaking out of a prison of my own making.  I reach beyond my own anxiety and physical limits to find a freedom from the trappings of fear.  To do so, I reference the master of escape Harry Houdini, who simultaneously broke free form the impossible, but unveiled the falsehoods of “magic.”  But I like to play with the contrast of an intimate live performance and a manipulated digital presentation. Performance can be evidential, with the artist removed from the sight.  The piece the public sees can be a leftover document or psychological space—residue of action to allude to the emotional space I have created.  

In all of my work, I leave unplanned elements so my anxiety or emotion is as real so I can connect directly to it.  I cannot become overly attached to some plan or expectation. I have been the creator, but have no control over its actual fate. The pieces crumble and fall apart before my eyes, and watching the events unfold I am forced to confront the temporal state in which we exist. I can see both birth and death as beautiful and terrible instead of turning my back on the reality of death, and I am taking the viewer along with me into this realization.