Artist Statement

Through my use of various materials—porcupine quills, shark teeth, oiled cherry, polished granite—my surrealist furniture and sculpture-based work encourages engagement, interactivity, and play while addressing ideas related to gender, the body, and commercial viability in relation to the perceived utility of objects in our homes. With the use of hostile materials, I’m highlighting the presence of friction in our home objects.

Drawing inspiration from traditionally revered classical art forms like painting and sculpture, the question that drives my work and research is this: why doesn’t society place the same consideration and value on the things that occupy our homes as it does on the traditional fields of fine art? Why is it that art, which exists only to be precisely what it is, a painting that you look at on the wall or a stone carving you place on a shelf, is so often held in a different esteem than objects of practical domestic utility?

I stretch my work to the farthest limits of what can be deemed utilitarian; its creation and meaning often come from its visual relation to commonly and easily recognized household objects. My overarching goal is to have fun with the work and users by challenging them to find ways to incorporate these pieces into their homes and, consequently, into their lives.

I continue to explore questions related to the body and how we live our interior lives. I strive to address this through the reciprocation of texture, form, color, and pattern. My formal training as a furniture maker and designer explores how studio furniture, though constructed with care and skill, need not be reliant on “usability”. To this very point, my work often focuses on the hindrance of one’s very ability to experience comfort and aid in familiar activity. The throughline within all of my pieces is to allow mindful viewers the opportunity to find humor in the everyday objects we surround ourselves with. By constructing objects that draw people away from the contemporary distractions and anxieties we are all wrapped up in, we create space, allowing for the possibility of humor in the everyday. Asking how much functionality one will sacrifice within the domestic setting, rather than the adage of ‘form follows function’, I subscribe to the notion of ‘form. function?’. In this way, my work seeks engagement through the exploration of memory through shared histories.