Let The Girls Play
It's important for me to be able to laugh at myself when it comes to mistakes and embarrassments. This feeling is something that I want to relay in my work, and I'm happy if I'm able to make at least one other person laugh about it too.
I create sculptures, installations, and drawings with the intention to celebrate ones ability to accept themselves and be self-confident in a society that isn’t always supportive of their choices and way of life. Each piece is a narrative based off of my own experiences of self-doubt, self-consciousness, and unworthiness that I have transformed into acceptance and love, all topped off with just a hint of humor.
Because I am creating work within the limitations of city living, I allow Brooklyn to give back to me in the form of inspirational found objects such as bottles and antique furniture. Brooklyn is my art supply store. I unpolish the smooth surface of the found objects using modeling compound, paint, or spray foam and create lumps, imperfections, and frivolous forms that one would typically want to conceal. The idea is to turn the object inside out, exposing the guts. I refer to the concept of abject phenomena and replicate it on a surface by sculpting boils, pimples, cysts, and ingrown hairs.
My pastel color palette is sweet and delicious, the antithesis of my abject content. I add pops of intuitively bent neon lights to push the idea of this paradox further. I allow the silhouette of my object to guide my decision regarding which color I will apply, and the forms that I will invoke on the piece. The work takes on a transformative quality that I attain when I obscure it through scale, quantity, color, surface treatment, material, and form.
I draw inspiration from the reality of situations and extract the dry humor that lies within even the darkest moment. The straightforwardness and bluntness of the concept is the set-up, and the finished piece is the punchline.
