Self-Portrait 2021-present, 2026
Mixed Media on Canvas (lavender plant, photograph, tape, acrylic, etc.)
59.5 x .75 x 79 in
I understand queerness and disability beyond their function as identity labels. They are lenses through which love, advocacy, and resistance emerge as practice. Rooted in my experience as a trans person with a neurological disability, and shaped by a transient upbringing, my work resists American essentialism. I approach craft with an anti-authoritarian framework that embraces belonging and care as a methodology for art and exhibition making.
Installations, sculptures, paintings, and drawings are composed of repurposed materials that were found, gifted, or inherited from colleagues, loved ones, and neighbors. Materials retain a sense of autonomy, participating in the exchange, bridging rural, middle-class aesthetics with conceptual and contemporary craft practices. Each piece is treated as a living object, grounded in the time and place of its making. Individual components are valued for their design, labor, and collaborative histories. A glass vessel contains dirt from the location where it was sculpted; drawings are made on recycled newsprint from a shared printshop; a title honors a past mentor.
Compositions change over time, are dismantled, reorganized, and shown in various site-specific contexts. Recorded histories documenting individual components' place of origin, cities traveled, or past exhibitions are included in each works cited list. Material histories grow and change, inviting viewers to connect with and engage the objects/images on display. Every installation is relational, every gesture, a form of gratitude. The artwork's complex identities reflect what it truly means to be a (US) American.