My artistic career is compelled by the idea that everyday fun, playfulness, and willingness to experiment can create human connection and help us investigate our world in new and interesting ways.
Most of my artistic investigations center on performance or public art. In 2009, I completed a series of projects In Chicago and LA called “From here to here”, connecting my house and a friend’s house with a long piece of thin string, a gesture that mimics the narratives we construct in our daily lives and wonders how our shared histories relate to our relationship to space in urban environments. This series culminated in 2009, when i was invited to connect Machine Project Gallery, my home gallery, to the LA County Museum of Art as part of a group show at LACMA.
For my newest works, i’ve kept the elements of play and everyday beauty, but have turned to the relationship of humans to nature. In a series of installations, i’ve crafted earthwork-inspired landscapes that mix real plants with fake plants and ask the viewer to “find the fakes.” In it, i wonder if there’s something special or essential about natural beauty versus man-made beauty and how that is an allegory for the gallery setting versus real life.
So far, the response to my work had been overwhelmingly positive: in my performance projects, inner city kids followed me, telling me, “that string shit is dope,” and a middle aged man decided to wrap up my string behind me, and return it as a souvenir of “that amazing day when you did something totally unexpected.” A group of performance artists vowed to paint a stripe across the US in response.
I hope my work can continue to appeal to all people, and that it continues to communicate a sense of reverence for everyday life and curiosity about the ways in which we are connected or disjoined.