Artist Statement February 2025
I create experimental narrative works exploring the mystical systems of meaning that individuals use to navigate a complex world, most often through the lens of evolutionary psychology and economic and religious constructs. I am curious about the limits of our ability to fully see the systems structuring the world - where the time scale is too enormous, where systems are too complex, where our desires and fears complicate our judgment - and how mystical relationships with the unknown form at the edge of our perception. I create narrative works with an evolving meaning through time because humans and societies construct meaning through stories, and because our only device for making sense of the world (our brain) is limited in perspective, inconsistent, biased, and continually shifting.
In my work, I draw on tenets of surrealism: indeterminate symbolism to plumb the depths of subjective psychology, evocative and sometimes randomly determined juxtapositions of imagery, and mischievous art intended to disquiet rigid mindsets. I am continually shocked by the casual violence of our global economy, in which market logics justify exploitation of people, animals, and our environment, and in which we seem to be inescapably complicit. In answer to this imperious rationalizing, absurdity can feel like a more honest and urgent response; A celebration of subverted power and of the powerless. I value the privilege of the artist (and the jester, and the feminine) to respond with maximalist non sequitur, aloof symbolism, and private jokes.
In my current work, I fabricate myths with puppets to explore our instinctive religious impulses and play with the complex emotions we project onto objects. I appropriate ubiquitous religious symbols as shorthand for intense individual and collective psychological experiences. For instance, my frequent use of the biblical apocalypse references our fear of annihilation and, more broadly, how unconscious fears have surprising implications for individual and societal behavior. I also often reference the Pleistocene epoch, in which megafauna roamed the earth and humans fought for survival in small bands, as a reminder about the transitory nature of all things no matter how fixed and inevitable they may seem. It is also a reference to the deep history of all aspects of our world and human nature, and the human yearning to understand the circumstances of our existence. As the most collaborative and imaginative species in the history of the planet, we are both bizarrely compelled and uniquely well suited to conduct this search.
For better or worse, my tastes are helplessly American: romantic, interminably optimistic, and believing the main character is clever, virtuous, and important enough to somehow have control over his own fate (while knowing full well that none of us do).
