Artist Statement

1. Artist Statement
I am an artist in an interior designer's body. I sculpt with domesticity while painting with
humor. My practice is not constructed on the foundation of the industry catalog, showroom, or
persistent sales rep but by the historical archive. Prancing into rooms I absorb the objects around
me, dragging these icons into crisis. I comically demolish the sexist stereotypes targeting the
legitimacy of the decorative arts. The interior design profession is obsessed with technology,
encouraging the computer to take control in the name of profit-driven production. The
standardized need for digital representation has rendered analog obsolete. My reaction is to push
against the pixel with unapologetically hand-crafted and decorative creations. Social Media
algorithms have brainwashed clients into requesting mindless aesthetic copy-paste duplication,
this hyper fixation on trends benefits no one, dangerously feeding into overconsumption.
Left at peace with my own creative devices, I spend time scavenging through thrift stores
and charity shops having far too much empathy towards forgotten relics. I dance with these
found manifestations to modify and subsequently “Queer” them. I honor collecting the histories
entombed within these forms, their politics fossilized. I excavate the readymade, decoding it
through digital archives to codify its value within our material culture. In Art history, the term
“decorative” has been used to exclude works in craft media as a lesser form of art, as not worthy
of merit. In my hands, to be “decorative” is to have implemented a conscious use of substance
and style, to reappropriate traditions, identities, and ways of making that have been ignored in
canonical art history.
I live my life between two opposing geographic, personal, and political landscapes; the
rural town of Red Bank, Tennessee, and the creative juggernaut that is Greenwich Village, New
York. I gladly shift between these realms as they assist my practice in their own way. From
2018-2020 I moved part-time to Manhattan for three semesters in undergraduate interior design
studies at The Parsons School of Design, where I am currently a graduating senior. During the
spring semester of my second year, the Coronavirus Pandemic upended the world. I returned
back to Tennessee, seemingly with my tail tucked tightly between legs. The pandemic marks a
major disruption in the timeline of my artistic development. This unforeseen glitch altered and
destroyed any dependence I had on others forcing me to take complete ownership over the
relevance and authenticity of the work I produced. It was at this time that I had the privilege of
participating in a remote studio course taught by American Artist. Over the duration of serval
months, I explored the internet as a conceptual material; Net as an object. American introduced
this mode of thinking into my life during a moment of unprecedented shifts among physical and
digital space. It was here that I experimented with my theory of “Crystallization As
Pixelization”, critiquing the current state of hyper digitization. The materiality of rhinestones is
rooted in the digital confines of our pandemic world, and our dependence on digital technologies
to serve as surrogates to shared physical space.
I vividly remember a 2018 drawing critique in which my professor, Diana Shpungin
spoke candidly about the impact of September 11th on her graduate studies at SVA in New York.
She explained how after learning of the attacks she and her cohort immediately knew that art in
America would never be the same. That it was their responsibility to make art that reflected that
moment in time, to passionately react only as the artist can, by finding the creativity in trauma.

2. Fast forward four years and the Coronavirus has allowed for a state of reckoning, a dissection of
the status quo. To not be called to inmate action during these recent years of turmoil would be a
disservice to myself as a living participant of these times. It is my prerogative to look critically at
our most urgent issues. By fearlessly using my work as a testbed for dismembering problematic
assumptions pertaining to interiors I can bring the participant into a state of cultural conciseness
otherwise unattainable by verbal argument alone.
I come from a generation raised by “The Martha Stewart Show”, obsessed with craft and
the delusion of domestic perfection. Long before I understood sculpture, Martha’s home-crafted
creations taught me the relevancy of objects; the significance of customization and modification
of humble material. The constructed environments around us have a language in which designers
imprint upon them throughout the usage of idyllic materials. I focus my attention to a pair of
seeming opposite conditions, the male sports club, and the suburban home. These spaces are
heavily gendered and decided by our consumer culture, the objects embraced within their walls
reflect our social values and are therefore worthy of further investigation. My profession has a
long-held historical obsession with all things “Taste”; the artful etiquette of educated, cultured,
and well-bred living. My praxis stands on the shoulders of a formal interior design education, we
are at a point where artists move freely across once strict divides between art, design, and craft
more so now than ever before. My objects exist on the edge of sculpture and decoration; toying
with the material expression of the everyday. My sculptural forms are participants, singular
actors, coming together within space to assemble a provocative performance.