Artist's Statement

My work utilizes bright colors, simple patterns, and textures to explore the collective human unconscious abstractly. I then use the results of my purely abstract pieces to create other works that address difficult and taboo topics. Painting and fiber are used in much of my work, along with a variety of other media. The hand is always visible; it provides grounding, and breathes life.

Variation and accidents enthrall me, and I eschew rigid technological uniformity in all aspects of my work, at the same time that I use technology to create various components of my work. My patterns are created by hand and digitized with minimal alteration. I’m fascinated by the ways that technology can be used to build art, while still fully maintaining the presence of the human hand in the result. My purely abstract works are playful and colorful, and are an instinctual exploration of the reactions humans have to color and pattern. I break things down into the simplest pieces and play with the different ways they can be recombined, seeking to understand my own basic responses to visual stimuli, and thus something of humanity as a whole.

My personal narrative shapes the second branch of my work, which addresses my experiences with sexual assault and harassment, as well as my identity as a queer person. Using imagery I developed in my purely abstract works, I focus on creating pieces that are readable and relatively palatable, as well as deeply honest and personal. They are vulnerable to the point of being raw, both out of a need to process my experiences, and in the hopes that others will understand and feel less alone in theirs. In addition to works that share my story, I also share the stories of others who have dealt with sexual assault and harassment. I seek to remove their cost for speaking up by sharing what they have submitted online anonymously. My work functions as a means to help them feel seen and heard, to have people understand how vast the problem actually is, and to call for societal change. It grows and changes with the addition of each new panel. I use fiber in these pieces, both because of its versatility and because it has historically been seen as ‘women’s work.’ Reclaiming it to tell our stories is empowering.