Artist Statement

I am an artist from Portland, Oregon, currently working in San Francisco, California. In my current work as a sculptor/ceramic artist I use accessible, recognizable imagery to shine a light on less than straight-forward stories of the human experience. Themes such as grief, sexuality, queerness, politics and identity are woven throughout in a deeply personal way. Though my work is strongly narrative I tend to play with ambiguity within these stories. Rather than being purely didactic I tend to employ symbols and metaphor as a means of communication with the viewer, a symbiosis which illuminates more than what I alone intended when creating the work.

I create both my representational and abstract sculptures to have an anthropomorphic quality. A porcelain sink wearing the stains of time with its rusted silver faucet and stained, cracked white veneer, or a stoneware chair whose sagging, woven seat sighs with defeat and exhaustion tell not just my stories but their own. They, along with my purely abstracted forms are imbued with all the beauty and faults of humanity.

My work is heavily influenced by process and material. Experimentation guides me through my practice, which defines me not just as an artist but as a person. My curiosity and lust for life have lead me to explore the pleasures and pain of my experience within my art.

As my primary medium, clay is something I have learned to listen to, leaving enough space within my process to not just impose my will, but allow this stuff of the Earth to speak for itself. When this balance is struck there is nowhere I’d rather be. It is my hope that the viewer can connect not only with the conceptual narratives told, but that I can also arouse a deeply human response through the sensuality and tactility of the forms. It brings me such joy when people’s instinct upon seeing one of my sculptures is to want to reach out and touch it.