I think that whatever community you're in really does influence your work in different
types of ways.
I mean certainly in Detroit, working and showing, there's a lot of space to work in, so that
influences the type of work that I make.
Also working at the College for Creative Studies and having access to the glass studio there,
that's certainly having those facilities influences the type of work that I make.
I think that just the environment of the city, not only the community, but the sort
of city at large is a very felt presence.
Teaching is an opportunity to try things that maybe I wouldn't try in my own studio practice
and to have a dialogue with students about a whole range of different issues.
Students bring a lot of new ideas and new issues to the table, so in that sense I feel
like it's a real benefit because I get to continually grow through those conversations.
Glass is, it's a really unique material to really feel softical material I think.
You know just the transparency of it and its ability to transmit light is unlike really
anything else.
It's almost as if it's a living thing.
So as an artist you have to continually be responding to that material and it's just
really like a really intimate process with the material.
Optics is something that I've been interested in just like the morality and visibility,
translucency, elasticity.
These are all things that I'm really excited about engaging in that I feel like the material
really speaks to.
So I am continually being more enamored with glass as I explore it more.
You know I think experimentation with any material is so important and it's really at
the core of my studio practice is you know just trying different propositions in the
studio and you know failing at many of them and then seeing what kind of rises to the
top and is interesting and is engaging and pursuing those.
In this show, this show is called To Touch the Sky with Two Arms and my work is really
looking at again these really ordinary materials, these retro-reflective materials that you would
see on the road at night, your headlights and kind of making an analogy with celestial
bodies.
So for instance on the wall behind me there's going to be a large moon that's made of road
bead and of course just making the simple connection between the moon as being a giant
reflector and then this like really common material and its kind of potential for the
sublime.
There's also going to be a hanging cloud that's made of really paper thin sheets of
glass that's going to hang in the middle of the space.
I try to approach my work with a spirit of risk taking and the unknown you know of all
my favorite artists who are also my peers.
I don't know that I would say that I like my work the best but I do always try to be
kind of discovering something, trying something new, taking a risk, going outside of a box,
whether or not that successful is different every time but at least you know I'm striving
to push the conversation forward.
