research overview
- My work has consistently explored how we construct our environments. Rather than treat this problem exclusively in material terms, one of my primary interests lies in the imaginary or psychological. In other words, how do we create meaning with the objects with which we surround ourselves? I view my studio as an arena to address the dynamic processes of what Roland Barthes dubs “naturalization,” asking how we define what is natural vs. cultural, interior vs. exterior. Recently the surfaces and structures of my works have become less gestural and increasingly ordered, thereby heightening a sense of artifice and theatricality, and exploring ideas about distance: physical, art historical, geographical and psychological. I recognize the potential for my works to set a stage upon which memories, myths, nostalgia, and imagination can play. As the scale of my work has changed from hand-held objects to spaces one can physically enter I now examine notions of the monumental.