SO

How much of today are you comprehending? And how clearly do you remember yesterday? 

As a person and an artist, I like to be surprised. I am often surprised by the strange contradictions in everyday life. I am fascinated by how we can see flashes of a dream while making coffee, that we create a face in two fried eggs, or get the image of an old friend’s house from the smell of a stranger. In my studio, I am often thinking about memory; what evokes it, why, and if it holds any kind of truth. I am not just interested in personal and specific memories, but collective memories and dreams we all might have (like flying, dying or our teeth falling out). There is a small fraction of space between last night’s dream and this morning’s reality, where perception and recollection intertwine. That same space reveals the discrepancies between our interior perspectives and outside reality. I want to live in that half awake liminal space, but I can’t. The closest I can come is in the studio. 

These quotidian (fancy word for everyday) ideas are worked through common household materials like cardboard, paper, and thread, as well as objects like oranges, apples and eggs. I am drawn to the ubiquitous, plain everywhereness of cardboard, along with its neutral color and organized corrugation. When you see a cardboard box, it can be holding anything from precious memories to your latest impulse amazon order. The dichotomy between inside and outside is present in other objects like oranges and eggs. Within these things I find a curious metaphor for our human nature and how our internal worlds project onto the one around us. 

Time is one of those things that is both a physical material and an idea. It takes form in digital video, where objects are able to interact with each other in ways that are unachievable in reality. Whatever dimension the work takes, I consider it all to be a form of collage. Tearing apart and reassembling seemingly unrelated elements allows me to access that dreamlike subreality. In my two dimensional work, time presents itself in empty space and within the degradation of once clear images. Recollection loses its fidelity and resolution as time passes, calling into question the reliability of memory. 

Just like an orange or an egg, (I can assume) that you have a body that also has an inside and an outside. We speak in inside voices, keep our thoughts to ourselves, and maybe even have rules about inside and outside clothes. In my work, everyday materials bridge the gap between abstract ideas and daily routines, while leaving space for you to project your idea of reality. The mix might be a little odd–perhaps it doesn’t even make much sense. But I have found that very few things do. However you perceive your world, consider this my invitation to pause in curious ambiguity–just for a little while. And I hope you’re wearing your outside clothes.