Blue Tape, 2024
Oil paint on sticks, tinfoil, VHS tape, pin
6.5 x 10 x 1 in
My practice centers on collecting and transforming fragments of lived experience into sculptural paintings. I gather found materials—VHS tapes, sticks, discarded palettes—and often hold onto them for years before they resurface in an artwork. These objects function as memory carriers and compositional elements, allowing me to build work that reflects daily observation and accumulated time. My paintings reference places that shape my life, including my studio in Chicago, walks through Humboldt Park, the edge of Lake Michigan, and memories of my childhood home in NJ. Through painting, wrapping, tearing, stapling, and assembling, I create layered surfaces that merge abstraction with subtle references to environment, memory, and human presence.
I work spontaneously and responsively to the surrounding landscape through walking, journaling, photography, meditation, plein air painting, and material collection. I use oil paint, acrylic, watercolor, charcoal, pencils, paper, tinfoil, and canvas to absorb the rhythms and textures of the landscape while allowing locally gathered materials guide the direction and physical structure of the paintings I produce.
My work embraces what I think of as “serious play.” Influenced by Dada and Neo-Dada strategies of recontextualization and material experimentation, I balance improvisation with formal concerns such as color harmony, spatial tension, and compositional balance. Architectural motifs—windows, thresholds, and structural divisions—frequently appear in my work, influenced by my father’s career as an architectural photographer and early exposure to observing and analyzing built environments.
I aim to create paintings that invite slow looking and encourage viewers to notice subtle details, recall personal memories, and reconnect with creative freedom. Ultimately, my work seeks to model an ongoing practice of attention—one rooted in curiosity, play, and sustained engagement with everyday life.