Believing strongly in the power of the universe’s energy and subliminal power that is bestowed upon humanity, my work is a conceptual message to listen to things that are not easily heard. Losing an immediate family member at a young age fueled most of my undergraduate work, which consisted of trying to execute thoughts, emotions, complexes, etc that dealt with mourning and life acceptance. The wings were inspired by my drive to get the weighted, mournful thoughts off my back. Each feather represented a separate thought of bereavement. Assembled together as wings, they spoke of the dichotomy between the massive weight of the mourning process and the light, heavenly positive message that wings possess. Having made the first set, I realized that they did not allow me to physically remove myself from the burden of bereavement. The second set achieved this attempt of separation, yet it also made me annoyed at the redundancy of using the feather. Thinking more about universal and existential suffering instead of merely my own, I started using patches as the voices of repaired wounds or damages done to all of humanity. This provoked me to speak of the dark subject matter of suffering with the counteracting positive, playful colors of the patches. Everyone needs to understand that they are not the only one in pain, and that pain encapsulates the essence of the pleasurable. Without one we would not have the other. Repeating the process onto other vessels reintegrated the initial conviction of each patch concealing an individual wound, feeling, or thought. For my graduate show I felt necessary to make it completely me; my thoughts, images, and everything that builds me. Placing the orbs in a circular position and putting myself in the center allowed me to be separate and blissfully absent from everything I obsess over.
Being separate yet surrounded by thought-filled orbs, which sprouted up from earthen, material subject matter, allowed me to transform this real life action of separation into an instance of being mentally disjointed from these seemingly fixated thoughts. I am aware of my thoughts presence among me, yet am able to remove them from my being at any given time.
The duality of glass allows me to grasp both extremities in the world, the hot and cold, soft and hard, sharp and dull, etc. The extremes of glass are reflected within my own personal characteristics, which is why I assume I am attracted to the material so much. Now that I have graduated, I intend to shift my attention to general production work. My immediate goals are to fine tune my skill and establish my place in the social glass network.
