The Long Arm Reaches Out, MFA Thesis, The University Gallery, Gainesville, FL, 2019
artist statement
As memories fracture over time, they become impossible to recount in words because they no longer live in the land of words. My sculptures imbue a collection of absorbed histories that reverberate through the ceramic material. The figures use personal mythology to discuss more profound concepts about our connection to the environment as it relates to the interior and exterior of the body. My most recent series of work is a reflection on the seemingly psychic landscape of North Central Florida. This area feels as though it breathes an otherness that can only live within its luscious canopy of live oak trees, Spanish moss, and the densely tangled vines that ensnare the land. This series of work links the metaphysical interior spaces of my mind to the walls of a large enclosed room, manifesting as an internalized mental space. It uses architecture as a physical barrier to represent what we try to repress and protect ourselves from, yet that we subconsciously drag with us. These poetic steps become ways to project a narrative onto the viewer about the unseen shadows we carry and the psychic armor with which we choose to camouflage ourselves.