Well, I work in a lot of mediums, I work as a printmaker, as a paper maker, as a sculptor.
How to categorize my work aside from those is a little more difficult.
I think the kind of work I make is not necessarily defined by its choice of medium, but by what it chooses to speak about.
So, my work is really centered at looking at identity, at performativity of identity, at kind of challenging social binaries in typifying identity.
So, using the language of type of work is difficult for me because my work exactly tries to challenge that, how you identify.
I was born in West Palm Beach, in Florida, and I grew up there until I was 10.
I moved to Wisconsin as a 10 year old.
I don't remember very much of Florida, to be honest.
I was a very kind of reclusive kid.
I didn't have too many friends, so I kind of hung out at home quite a lot, and I was pretty creative since I was a kid.
I took a lot of art classes, I took a lot of after school classes, science related things, drawing, painting.
I switched schools quite frequently when I lived there, actually.
I went to four different schools in the few years that I lived there.
So my social settings changed a lot, and a lot of friends changed.
I had the luxury of starting over many, many times where people didn't know anything about me.
So I could allow myself to get rid of the things in the past that I didn't like, and make new claims, or new starting points, where I could be somebody different.
I did that fairly frequently, and I think that that influences my work quite a lot.
Also seeing how other people go about that, how other people find their identity through not only what they think of themselves,
but how they're influenced by those around them, how they construct their identity by signifiers, by film, by music, by art, by clothing.
Their family, their friends, their sexuality, and how that changes, how these external signifiers claim your identity to other people,
and how it changes the way that other people react to you, and how they interact with you.
I did a lot of drawing and painting classes, and photography, a lot of black and white, dark room photography.
But I really fell in love with printmaking, and paper making, mostly.
When I started kind of learning those two processes, I couldn't stop making it.
It was easier to run through ideas too, it was faster. You can make more things in less amount of time.
You can change an image, whereas with a canvas or a drawing, you are not stuck with an image,
but you're stuck with the substrate, which in printmaking and paper making, you can change as much as you want.
It's really beautiful to take something living and work from it when it's in the ground to the final product.
I also really enjoy making really beautiful plain sheets of paper and working onto them.
I haven't bought paper, and I don't think I've bought paper in maybe four years.
This is one of a newer series of works, and these came really out of nowhere.
This test paper, I had been thinking of working with the male figure for a while,
and mostly representations of the male figure in how they are idealized by other men, mostly.
I had amassed these old magazines, these old beefcake kind of magazines, which you can see really directly,
where it comes from in something like this.
These old magazines from the 50s and 60s of bodybuilders,
which you could look at as a reference point if you're trying to get your body in a little bit more shape.
For most people, it was really just soft porn for men in these years who could be more discreet.
Using this form of the male body, idealized by other men, it's this very masculine approach.
I really wanted to work off of that and challenge that.
The collages are very experimental. I'm not entirely sure how they're working right now.
I'm trying to work without the collage and see how it functions in just adorning their bodies throughout
with these very feminine Victorian and traditional Japanese motifs.
Also sourced from women's garments, patterns from women's garments to contemporary women's garments.
I think that identity is very fragile because it's so highly constructed and it's a lifelong endeavor.
People remember how you were 10 years ago. They remember how you were one week ago.
It's very fragile. You have to really maintain it and you have to really kind of coax it.
What else would you like to know?
