ARTIST’S STATEMENT
The home fascinates me because it is where we start. As we grow up, the things we surround ourselves with in our homes are deeply engrained in us. We are intimately familiar with their surfaces, textures, smells, how they feel. Entwined in our every day experiences, these objects become rich with layered associations. Our early experiences act as templates that substantially shape future interactions and understandings. But this structure of understandings that we build as children is constantly tested and adjusted in dialogue with experience. With the passage of time, some beliefs are whittled away. Others are reinforced. Differences between expectation and reality create gaps that must somehow be bridged.
My work addresses the dynamic interplay between domestic objects, experience and meaning. I manipulate everyday objects to suggest that they, like we, are in a process of redefinition. These objects have strong domestic associations suggesting familial relationships and situations. Materials grow into each other; new structures emerge at the cost of older ones. Some things are nurtured or echoed in delicate structures, while others are plundered for material or left to wither. Usually I use only materials removed from the piece to build the new structures. This limitation forces me to push my constructions beyond the most obvious solutions and gives the piece added rigor.
I choose objects that show use or wear, not for nostalgia’s sake, but to underscore their functionality. By manipulating them, I subvert the object’s original function, and collide the utilitarian and art object. The boundaries of an object’s definition interest me most. I push my objects until they are on the verge of a multitude of other possibilities.
As a sculptor, and as a painter, my work examines the negotiation of cultural model and individual experience in the domestic setting. I am intrigued by the carefully constructed, highly marketable models presented by catalogues such as Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, Williams and Sonoma, etc. My paintings begin with images scanned from these home-furnishing catalogues that are then printed on canvas or paper. In subsequent layers I use silkscreen and hand painting to allude to various means and scales of production. Part prescribed and part invented, each room is a negotiation between individual invention and cultural prescription. The resulting rooms are intimate facades embedded with preconceived values and marketable narratives. The home is at once our personal refuge and our construct of social identity.