Statement:

My work negotiates the individual’s struggle with unknown and uncontrollable aspects of life, such as healing, trauma and transformation. My artworks explore ways in which people seek refuge from overbearing fears and anxieties of physical existence through faith in something greater than the self. Faith and ritual are alluded to in loose narratives, while the unknown is suggested by a surrounding darkness or sparse space encompassing the subject. The appearance of personally and spiritually charged materials are often used in my work. For instance, mustard seeds are a reoccurring theme in many of my pieces. In The Heart Organ, a woman is submerged in a bathtub full of mustard seeds and in The Center Organ with Figures, two figures, made of mustard seeds are intertwined in a symbiotic embrace. While the seeds represent growth, they are also connected to my own personal traumas of coping with bodily ailments and also to Buddhist and Christian parables. As a child I bathed in mustard seeds for their medicinal properties to help heal my ailments of chronic anxiety and bodily ticks. Broader connotations relate to religious parables that explore how one can grow faith and move mountains from a single seed. When exhibited together, the photographs and sculptures are engaged in an exchange between the flattened reality of the image and the occupied space of the object. In two-dimensional form the seeds are void of any physical presence yet they allow for glimpses into altered states of consciousness. This collapse of space is re-inflated by the sculptures that draw attention to the actual properties of the real life seeds. This push and pull dialogue mimics the individual’s physical and cerebral negotiation with existence.