Series Overview

In Homage to the Bones, my desperation to preserve complex memories of old friends and family transformed crisp and familiar images into brittle, bonelike sheets of abstracted relationships. These new sculptures subconsciously embody the fragile nature of the history held between the subject and the creator. In a posture of gratitude and lament, I embrace what the artistic process teaches us: We must experience our own terrifying emptiness, our own death, in order to walk up to the edge of beauty and approach the starting line to total, perfect hope.

Resurrected Memories of Home (Series): Resurrected from my past, this series of work was originally created during a time of darkness, a time when I didn’t know what hope was nor how much I needed it. I was a young artist searching for myself and my place in the world. There was nothing terribly wrong with the pieces as they were, but something about them felt flat, incomplete. As I work through my past - this part of me that, out of fear, I’ve too quickly forgotten - I resurrect memories that I have realized aren’t in fact all that scary, and I give them new life. 

What do you do when all that is left is the bones?

Take care of the bones.

 
 

Homage to the Bones (series). Disassembled polaroids, wax. 2014

Homage to the Bones

This series was originally intended as a way to preserve memories of old friends and family. I had carried these polaroids with me around the world for years, and the wear of the travel was beginning to affect their lifespan. My desire was to cover them with a firm, silky wax coating, but the reaction of the polaroid chemicals to the heat quickly transformed them from images of people I’ve loved into brittle, bonelike sheets of abstracted relationships.

 

Burn Down the House (detail). 2014. Mixed media on watercolor board.

Burn Down the House.

From the series “Resurrected Memories of Home”.

 

One Piece of Our Broken Vessel (series). Photo transfer on canvas. 2010.

One Piece of Our Broken Vessel

From the collaborative exhibition, The Urbanity Project, this piece visually interprets a series of poems exploring the everyday brothels in Shanghai, China.