The history of craft as a method of storytelling greatly informs my work. This history spans thousands of years and practically all cultures, from the vases of ancient Greece to colonial American quilts. These painstakingly rendered objects contain with them tales, myths, and histories of the world. I am particularly intrigued by areas overlap between fine craft and performance such as puppetry, which strongly appeals to a viewer’s ability to empathize. I am to echo these histories in my own practice with a sensitivity to storytelling and repetitive textile processes in a contemporary context.
Inspired by theater, history, and the art of storytelling, I create soft sculptures that speak from one of countless perspectives within the modern gay community- a community on the cusp of greater social acceptance while continuing to harbor both internal and external effects of decades of secrecy, fear, and shame. These objects oftentimes border a line between playful and sinister while posing questions about the ways in which we discover, discuss, and engage in sexuality as well as in other issues of social rights and cultural traditions. The main process I utilize in my work is a sort of sculptural piecework consisting of sewing hundreds of exact shapes into playful, geodesic forms. I’m drawn to materials like leather, pleather, and spandex for their formal qualities as well as the connotations they contain of nightlife, identity, performance, and sexual scenarios. Questions arise as to how such subjects have been or are supposed to be interacted with.
