Artist Statement
ICE STORM 2010

I am interested in beauty, but I mistrust it. Instead, I look for beauty that exists in tension with the materials or the circumstances that invent it.

It is impossible to be faithful to any medium. Typically, I make art out of materials for which I feel a heartfelt attraction, privileging goods and techniques that answer the needs of the work. This has resulted in sculpture and installations produced in a range of materials, including silk flowers, artificial hair, wire, or cast resin.

This body of work is a meditation upon themes of an alternate nature, one that is created in the mind as a reassurance against the inevitability of death. In this controllable world, I can prevent icicles from melting, create larger than life snowflakes in preposterous configurations, and freeze flowers as they bloom. In the fantasy of artificiality, the fleeting moment is held in stasis and death is denied.
 
One installation is comprised entirely of over 120 suspended clear, cast resin icicles whose sharp tips dangle precariously above the viewer’s head. The work attempts to mix retinal delight with a sense of dread.  The image of the icicle was taken from a vivid dream I had of my mother shortly after her death. We met together outside of my family house, where the landscape was covered with icicles. I grew anxious as I realized the melting ice symbolized the limit of our time together, and soon both she, and the icicles were gone. 
 
Another major body of work is comprised of faceted clouds of snowflakes. Each snowflake was cast individually and then assembled into complex formations to create both freestanding snowdrifts and creeping formations. The compositions suggest an exaggerated fantasy of nature where the viewer can behold the individual beauty of each flake in sharp focus and keep it there without fear of it melting and slipping away.

The installation Silver Field was created from thousands of silver and clear cast resin flowers, that spread organically across the walls. Flower forms have dominated much of my sculpture over the past few years because of their relationship to memorials. Here, I use the flowers to honor my mother’s memory, and the gardens we created together that have now long withered.

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