Using the poetry of image and form , I analyze and question the architecture of cultural memory. They say that History is written by the conquerors, but I am interested in the hidden histories, and in how and why the original intents of many cultural producers become forgotten, submerged, or diverted. My work grows from a desire to understand how history is remembered, and what it means to make a mark; It allows me to time-travel, imagining the past through the artifacts left behind, and the future through what I create and leave. Employing a wide variety of medias from chalk to cast metals, and found objects to self-engineered circuits, I hope to cultivate awareness and inspire questioning. In my current work, I explore the idea of resonance, between participants in the gallery and in the reverberation of seminal ideas through time. My work coaxes out, but ultimately embraces contradiction, complication and fluidity.

Project Writings:

Monuments to the Unmomentous
The urban landscape is both the source and site for much of my work. Monuments to the Unmomentous is an ongoing series of temporary public sculptures I’ve worked on since 2005. These diminuative bronze (un)monuments investigate and respond to extant public monuments and strive towards a more egalitarian recording of history. I made the choice of each subject after defining the archetypes of memorials/monuments, then translating their meanings in radically different ways. I also carefully consider placement of each monument, looking for spaces that seem appropriate for a monument and places that resonate with a certain feeling or perceived trope. The monuments are generally site-specific, as I respond intuitively to public spaces. For example, a dead mouse represents a different take on a tragic monument, for instance, one to a fallen hero, and is placed on a mouse-sized plinth, a concrete curb in the grass. Through this work I aim to provoke a more egalitarian process for choosing the subjects for monuments in order to highlight existing machinations of influence and foster an alternative historical viewpoint.

Famous Last Words
“I’m not the least afraid to die.” These last words of Charles Darwin recently inspired me to research the final recorded words of the famous, and infamous. I combed through hundreds of quotes to collect those which I felt drawn to, that epitomized the lifetime of someone I admire, or illustrated some of the many possible different moments before death. These hopeful, futile, exemplary, admonishing, somber, and humorous reflections of last moments are to me a captivating slice of knowledge. The material of the eggshells is a challenging and integral element of this work. Chicken eggs represent an unusual combination of the mass-produced consumable and the organic. As a metaphor for the potential for life, a symbol of the frailty of that life and of the knowledge contained within a lifetime. The process required to etch and preserve each egg is a metaphor for the process of maintaining and transmitting collective history and knowledge.

It’s About Time: An Intervention on the Spearman and Bowman Monuments
Passersby of the site of the Spearman and Bowman monuments at Michigan Avenue and Congress Parkway often wonder what happened to their apparently missing weapons. The assumption is that the spear and bow were damaged at some point, or have been temporarily removed for cleaning or repair. In fact, the two Native American men on horseback have always been unarmed. With this project, It’s About Time, the artist wishes to empower ephemerally the monuments by drawing their shadows with weapons in hand. During most of the day the work appears as a double shadow with the shadow cast by the sun. Once a day, the two shadows align giving the Spearman his spear and the Bowman his bow.