About my work

Short Artist Statement:

My artistic practice is deeply rooted in physical process, material durability, and unconventional fabrication. I specialize in manipulating everyday and industrial components—such as plastics, glues, detergents, found debris, and borax crystals—to uncover their hidden structural and aesthetic capabilities. Rather than working from a rigid blueprint, I utilize an experimental methodology that involves thermal, chemical, and physical manipulation: melting, burning, structural casting, and material fusion. I treat unexpected material shifts or structural breaks not as failures, but as data points that guide the build forward. My production framework relies on a systematic four-phase cycle: material sourcing, transformation, controlled evolution, and structural integration. This alchemical, hands-on approach equips me with a deep, practical understanding of material thresholds, problem-solving, and the longevity of unconventional media in physical spaces.

Long Artist Statement:

I am a process-based installation artist driven by radical resourcefulness. In my studio, nothing is wasted: tools, furniture, industrial off-cuts, scrap debris, and used drop cloths are systematically integrated back into the work. I actively reject the procurement of pristine, new materials, choosing instead to operate within a self-imposed economy of what is already available. Sourcing my primary media from roadsides, dumpsters, domestic environments, and meaningful personal artifacts, I treat every discarded object as a vessel of untapped structural potential and layered history.

My practice is defined by a unique domestic catalyst: a large gumbo pot. Originally utilized simply as the most accessible vessel in my studio, the pot has evolved into the central symbol of my methodology. Growing up in Louisiana, making gumbo with my dad became one of my foundational memories. Gumbo is an intentional melting pot born from whatever ingredients are on hand, and my artistic production functions under that exact framework. Within this vessel, I mix and push accessible household compounds—borax, liquid detergents, lighter fluid, polymer adhesives, and melted plastics—far past their intended material limits.

My workflow utilizes physical and thermal stressors: burning, melting, chemical growth, and layering. I deliberately court volatility, leaning into processes that defy absolute control. When a surface cracks, spills, or hyper-crystallizes, I do not correct the mutation; I accelerate it. I treat my studio as a laboratory, investigating what objects are capable of becoming when stripped of their utilitarian definitions.

This production model cycles through four systematic phases:

1. Sourcing: Sifting through and collecting the overlooked and discarded.

2. Alteration: Physically, thermally, or chemically disrupting the components.

3. Evolution: Allowing the materials to autonomously change while observing their thresholds.

4. Integration: Constructing the final physical installation.

The learning phase of this cycle never truly concludes, as the structures remain highly reactive. I am entirely willing to exhibit pieces while they are still in unstable, evolving states. For me, structural perfection is a limitation; failure, chemical decay, and unpredictability are the actual engines of formal innovation.

This experimental methodology has earned me a reputation as an artist-alchemist. Like historical alchemy, my objective is transmutation—elevating the ignored and baseline into something unfamiliar and unexpectedly significant. To ground these volatile experiments, I frequently employ raw primary colors, anchoring the chaotic forms to the industrial language of construction, warning signs, and raw material origins.

Ultimately, my work aims to disrupt the viewer's sensory expectations through a distinct "wow factor" designed to shock, intrigue, and confuse. My environments operate like structural guessing games, forcing audiences to question the chemistry before them and reconsider the latent potential of their own daily environments. During my senior exhibition, I staged an interactive installation where viewers had to decipher the raw materials behind a series of complex physical experiments.

By inviting the public to engage with these strange, mutated forms, I aim to demystify the act of creative risk-taking. Displaying structural vulnerability and experimental failure gives others psychological permission to do the same. I challenge the assumption that materials—or people—have fixed, predetermined purposes. I want my audience to look at the ordinary debris of their lives and recognize that with a daring willingness to experiment, anything can be transformed.