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My work is a contemplation on material, process, and object metaphors that juxtaposes the medium of clay with industrial materials to create installations and small works that speak of landscapes lost. Inspired by the landscape of my agrarian childhood home now covered by suburban sprawl, I strive for these works to be spaces and scenarios the viewer can physically or psychologically enter and inhabit, that calls one to pause and witness the result of my consideration of the changing landscapes that surround us.
I employ the medium of clay in unconventional ways to accent the metaphorical capacity of the medium to communicate a sense of memory, ephemerality, and loss. Based primarily on forms from the now lost landscape of my childhood, the clay objects I create may be unfired and preserved in wax, or fired with raw or unexpected surfaces. I present these objects as physical tributes to a memory, marking both a landscape that I have experienced that no longer exists, and the actual tangible process of object making. These clay objects are then placed with forms made of materials that currently inhabit and fill this now suburban landscape.
The resulting works are entities that are symbiotic yet impossible, balancing what can be seen now, and was seen before. These works speak of the human idea and need of home, and the necessary yet chaotic change that rural and suburban landscapes constantly undergo. They are meant to leave viewers questioning, perhaps considering the role they play in the landscapes that surround them.