One of the concepts that inform my work is the artificial gap between art and craft, high culture and popular culture, the mind and the body. I interrogate and explore these gaps through the use of crafting techniques and non-traditional materials to create art installations that change the ways in which audiences interact with space; that create stories and environments that are horrific, implying danger, yet super kawaii (i.e., cute); and that appeal to the tactility of the body while engaging the mind.
The underlying concept behind all of my work is alterity, Othering, and abomination. The way that people see and don’t see, accept and reject, self-impose and self-implicate because we all, at the basest parts of our selves, want to be accepted and do not want to be like those Other people who are insert-your-favorite-category-here. My work is a construction of these attitudes approached from multiple sides—which is, historically, almost a Cubist approach—taking no firm stance, but trying to show that what is Other is really what is already in you. Through this approach, I create little stories—micro-narratives—that act as modern day morality plays—as fairytales—and address the stories that we tell to and for ourselves.
My work is theatrical and performative; whimsical, bodily, and interactive; and I am drawn to working transdisciplinarily, in mixed media, and modularly. My academic background means that my conceptual process includes taking into account the historical context of an idea and its past and future iterations as well as its theory-oriented, philosophical framework to create a meta-idea—the culmination of those ideas’ sources into one narrative that tells a new, hypervalent version of the original idea. My conceptual process also means that I have a transdisciplinary understanding of the sources from which I derive inspiration like Japanese popular culture, anime and manga, Japanese lolita fashion; fairytales, both modern and historic; horror movies and body horror; superflat and kawaii culture; stories of the supernatural and chimeric constructions; archetypes and magic(k); mythology and memento mori.
The usage of non-traditional art materials (e.g., craft materials, materials from the hardware store, or found objects) has always been part of my studio practice and speaks to my belief that art is everywhere and in everything and that, through the intervention of the artist and the audience, anything can become aesthetically pleasing—whether that aesthetic if for the beautiful, the grotesque, the beautifully grotesque, or the grotesquely beautiful. I think that art is what we say it is rather than some construct that has been labeled “art,” and I think that everyone already has access to art in their everyday lives yet do not necessarily recognize it as such.
Words, words, words. So many words. There are a lot of words here, and there are even more situated as a frame for the gallery section of this *waves hand* thing. This should probably replace the other, but I think that they are both important for different reasons.
This one is more about all of my art ever in an abstracted, over-arching way; they other is more specifically relevant from a theory-related standpoint.
Also, the Literature degree means words are kinda the thing.
