I make work about complexity — images, objects, and experiences that resist a single interpretation — seeking to represent stories behind the surfaces, show contradictions of conflicting truths in a single image, describe a world where context changes what we perceive, and explore the gaps between perception and reality.
My work attempts to invoke full-body visceral experiences to shine light on how we understand ourselves in relationship and context.
Fundamentally a visual artist and philosopher, my art is a contribution to a conversation, giving shape to ideas that I can express more fully as sensory experiences rather than only words.
Having begun primarily drawing people, I have spent much of my career building installations and performances — environments in which the figure was a living, breathing person, not just a representation of one. However, throughout, I have always maintained a practice of drawing and painting.
In the effort to make the world a better place, I aspire to make things that are beautiful, build trust, point to solutions, bring us together, reflect our power, and approach our differences with curiosity and respect. Change is hard. We need each other to make it possible.
Bio
Originally from Washington, DC, I have lived in Oakland, California since 2010, living primarily in Chicago in between, and shown my work locally, nationally, and internationally.
Most recently, I have gone back to my foundations with a series of drawings about trees, capturing their depth and complexity as metaphors for human lives, while retaining the human lens of our perception.
My installations have utilized overlays of light, color, shadow, and film in labyrinths of transparent materials. My original text piece SecondPlace, about migration, has been presented live with performance artist Natalie Brewster Nguyen in Chicago, as an ambisonic sound installation created by audio artist Monica Ryan at Sight Sonic Sound Festival in the U.K. and Long Beach sound festival SoundWalk. Collaborators include slit-shutter photographer and fine artist Kostas Dimitreas (Greece) and Northwestern University’s Intelligent Information Laboratory (Chicago). My set designs complemented performances by dance and theater companies in Chicago and San Francisco, including the renowned Lookingglass Theatre and Kinetech Arts.
My installations of interactive wax paintings, use Arduino microcontrollers to change images using light and the presence of the viewers. Since moving to the Bay Area in 2010, my work has been seen at The Fromm Institute at UCSF in San Francisco, Fort Mason as part of the San Francisco International Arts Festival, at the Performance Art Institute’s show “Keeping an Eye on Surveillance” curated by Hanna Regev; at Classic Cars West in Oakland, curated by Rebecca Kerlin; as part of the immersive theater experience The Decameron at Fort Mason, curated by Karl Gillick; and at the art and technology group CODAME's 2013 gala event 5ENSES, curated by Kiri Rong. In 2014, I collaborated with the innovative technology-based dance company, Kinetech Arts and adapted my painting SecondSight as a set for interactive dance. The Other Side, performed at Central Market Now, Kinetech's Kunst-Stoff Studios, SAFEHouse, and ODC.
The large-scale interactive painting Luminous is on permanent display at China Lounge restaurant in Pleasanton, California, created in collaboration with LED artists Dustin Jay Edwards and Dan Cote, commissioned by Kiri Rong, with engineering by Carl Pisaturo.
My performance series—The One Truthiness, addressing issues of fear, violence, and trust in response to the movement for Black lives, and other longstanding conflicts with no easy resolution. This premiered as part of Kinetech's Featured Artist Series, 2014, further developed at the San Francisco International Arts Festival in 2016, and turned into a four-part series presented from 2017–2020 by Lower Bottom Playaz in Oakland, California (and on Zoom), produced and moderated by Oakland’s first Poet Laureate, Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, plus a 2020-21 Zoom-based version called “Trust,” commissioned after George Floyd was murdered.
I co-founded Chicago-based visual theater company Local Infinities, creating 11 materials-based visual performances over 7 years, featuring 800 lbs of dirt, 100 gallons of water, or dipping people in giant vats of wax. Local Infinities performed at Oerel international theater festival in the Netherlands and Kyiv Travnevy in Ukraine and curated two international performance series at Links Hall in Chicago. Our original work went on to win a Most Innovative Theater award at New York’s Fringe Festival.
I have taught encaustic painting workshops at WaxWorksWest in Santa Cruz, California and at the International Encaustic Artists annual conference.
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