Artist Statement

Within my body of work, I try to encapsulate the inspiration garnered from my personal scientific and curatorial background. Having been surrounded by artworks, scientific specimens, and archival documentation, I have attempted to take aspects that one would find within the profession and incorporate them into the themes of my work. When I was first making my way through college it was tough trying to think of something new and exciting for every project assigned to me. Although I managed to create works from these assignments, it never really seemed to make a cohesive body of work.

Looking inward I decided my focus would be on insects. Something so intrinsic to me since I was a toddler. Never fearing always studying. Fascinated. So it would be with insects that the beginnings of my first body of work were born. While I do not necessarily still focus on insects as my main muse in which I create work, they are still heavily influencing of the subject matter in which I continue to dabble. My current works focus on aspects of paleontology, biology, and moving into my own cultural heritage.

Most of my work is done in metal casting, using the lost wax method, with molds taken from fossils in my personal collection as well as models made from my own hand. By casting these models and fossils, I am essentially replicating the circumstances that caused them to fossilize without taking millions of years. Focusing on Cambrian creatures for their abstract natures, I like to put them in a form of gravitational stasis. This “stasis”, along with the process and subject matter/composition, all represent my constant fascination with science. It is also the method I choose to interact with the viewer using these foundations of science, such as physics space, and how we understand time. This gives my audience a multitude of aspects within the piece to comprehend and ponder on as their eyes explore the artwork.