The Color of Temperance: Embodied Energy 2015

Artist Statement

I create large-scale semi-permanent installations using discarded domestic materials and unwanted histories, realizing and regenerating the beauty found in healing of lives lost. Beginning with once adored furniture, dishware and carefully folded linens, I transform our collective agreements of domestic life by shattering and combining them with materials such as concrete, copper, rusted metal, and repurposed wood.

The forgotten space plays a critical role in my work as it nearly always serves as either my canvas or palette, or both. In neglected homes, abandoned buildings, or even in the gallery space, my installations bring together familial memory, transformation and healing. My works examines the psychology of abandonment, seeking to bring compassion to the no longer desirable pieces of domestic lives. Strongly influenced by theater and my years as a master set painter, my sculptures act as small sets or environments within a larger space, often interacting and disrupting the established physical structure. My work draws on my personal story and imagery of the post-industrial ruins of my hometown, Cleveland, Ohio. By collecting these fragments of a decaying legend of America’s Rust Belt, my dynamic sculptures bring new life to a forgotten past.

These unlikely domestic and industrial bedfellows are unified into a new beauty, rising from a rich foundation of my melded and cathartic re-construction. This unexpected coupling holds viewers as they explore unkempt broken bits and decomposing memories creating a new story. My work asks the viewer to contemplate their own domestic history and revel in the surprising beauty of the new place they find themselves.