Artist Statement
In my art, I analyze systems of communication. I explore advertising and the nuance between text and image; various methods used in society to convey ideas and thoughts. Within these systems, I am able to make work about my close friends, family, and the people who have affected me most in my life. I am not very affectionate, and these pieces function as an assortment of affectionate communication with those closest to me. Each work in the show is dedicated to a different person or group of people in my life.
In the painting Emmette Talks, I transcribed video recordings of my one-year-old brother’s first attempts at speech. The transcription was kept on a word document and projected onto the canvas, where I painted the shadows of the projection. This process makes his organic, inexplicable verbal expressions legible via digital filtration.
Automatic Writing 02 addresses my dad, and the large ink drawing includes most of my social circle at Interlochen. Both pieces were made through stream-of-consciousness techniques, which I use to ensure that I am honest, candid, and unedited. I want to offer this side of myself to my audience because these qualities are valuable to me in keeping my art accessible. In the sculptures Catachresis and Untitled, I used a set of stencils designed in my own typeface, arranged to spell out personal, unrevised writing. The inflexibility of the stencils and the sculptural quality of the ceramic serve to formalize excerpts of my writing which are intentionally candid. In my paintings of consumer goods, I am adopting their brand and widely-recognized image in order to portray my own thoughts.
I seek these forms of filtration because it enables me to say what I need to say under the pretense of communicative systems designed to be wide-reaching. Within each of these techniques, evidence of my influence remains. The stenciled letters, calligraphed words, painted projections, and replicas of consumer objects are all made imperfect by the interference of my hand. The degree of separation between a Google Image of a Busch beer can and my painting of it, between the stencil of the letter A and the warped ceramic it produces, between the projection and the painting of the projection, reveals an access point for the viewer. I want to offer as many opportunities as I can for the audience to freely enter and mentally engage with my art because art to me is useless if it is not available.
