Artist Statement:

I enjoy creating my art with my hands, with the preferred medium of pottery and sculpture, which provides an efficient way to instill my passion into my work, but also my pain. Not all mediums are enjoyable to work with, like metal, wire, or cinderblocks. But I see the temporary suffering of my hands to be worth it for my creative vision. I desire to convey themes of both pleasure and pain, and curiosity and fear with my work, both through the process of creating my art, and through viewing my art. Some of my art is interactive and some could potentially be dangerous to the touch, but I like to give the audience the choice of how close they get with my works. Along with a potential for physical danger as an element of my vision, I also enjoy adding more psychological elements of fear. Something I quite enjoy in my art is using trypophobia, or the repulsion of small holes, against my viewers. I particularly enjoy adding small holes to my art as an homage to Yayoi Kusama’s polka dots, but also to one of my greatest interests and fears, infinity. As I see it, holes in my art represent how small everything really is when looked at in relation to everything else. What am I but one tiny hole on a huge rock? Another influence from this theme is Jorge Luis Borges’ Library of Babel, which describes an inconceivably large library containing books with every combination of letters that there is. I find an immense amount of influence from this story because of how enjoyable it is to imagine all the possibilities of the books in the story.
Other than the more horror driven side of my art, much of my work is representational, and most depict animals in some way. This stems from my lifelong love and appreciation of animals and my previous desires to become a zoologist. I always put what I love into my art, and my love for nature and animals has never gone away. My love of fear and animals has culminated into most of my pottery pieces being ocean animals and fish. Because of my own Thalassophobia, fear of deep water, it is somewhat soothing to make scary deep-sea fish into my masterpieces.