Born and raised in Port Arthur, Texas, and happily settled in Austin, I take great pleasure in obliterating the illusion of uniqueness and individuality promised by mass-produced, pre-coded crafts.
Within the several bodies of work that I create simultaneously, the materials vary, but the meditative processes involved in creating them are linked by repetition, pattern, and the extravagent use of radiating colors.
In exploring our culture’s product
excess and resulting cast-offs, I try to squeeze out the potential in overlooked
or undervalued materials. Mediums range from throw-aways, paint swatches, packing
and labelling supplies, scrapbook paper punches, fused-plastic Perler beads,
to everyday family household refuse. The tailings of art-making and daily life
are further reduced into the Inuksuapik sculptures. Inuksuapik is an Inuit word
that roughly translates to a stone sculpture marking a beautiful, spiritual
place. These time capsules contain the most inconsequential memories of a day.
Bits of a cereal box finished off at midnight while watching television, an
old grocery list, a broken toy, a shirt that doesn’t fit, the paper scraps
left over from the hundreds of punched paper dots are just a sampling of the
bulk that is reclaimed. Stacked and balanced, they stand as gaudy monuments
to a trashy life floating by, and as a reminder of the mania and guilt of waste,
but more powerfully, its next incarnation.