about
I grew up carrying the feeling that something was wrong with me. That feeling of wrongness, of being on the outside of something, has resonated through my bones for as long as I can remember. As I have aged, I have been able to put names to the reasons I felt like I didn’t fit into the spaces I was told I should: being a transsexual, lesbian atheist put me firmly outside of the Southern Baptist community I was raised into, and disability alienated me from many other spaces. It came as no surprise, then, when I identified with representations (fictional and otherwise) of otherness: monsters like Mary Shelley describes in Frankenstein, abused and aggressive shelter dogs, and Biblical outcasts like Eve and the devil. I’m drawn to things and beings that are a little (or, very) to the left of “normal.”
Alongside “monstrous” figures and scenes, I incorporate natural elements and figures into my work, such as deer, dogs, birds, and pine trees like the ones that formed a cradle around the town where I grew up. I find that translating my ideas through animals and other natural figures strengthens my connection to the world around me and therefore strengthens my art. My work revolves around figures such as these, which provide effigies through which I can express my experiences and ideas.
My work centers on transness and queerness, particularly the ways that my transness and queerness interact with other aspects of my life, such as childhood, repression, religion, Texan culture, and the people I love.
Printmaking is my primary method of making because it offers me an avenue to reflect (figuratively and often literally) on my own experiences and what I want to make of them. In addition to printmaking, my work incorporates woodworking, machine- and hand-quilting, oil painting, collage, ceramics, paper mâché, and more. I believe that not restricting myself to one medium allows me to more thoroughly explore my concepts in the way(s) that is truest to my experience of that concept.
My making practices are deeply informed by medium and by my personal associations with different mediums. My late father might have been the only woodworker or metalsmith in the world for all that I associate those practices with him. Sewing and quilting is my paternal grandmother’s, yarn work is my cousin’s, weaving belongs to a fellow art student whose exhibition brought me to tears. For me, making art is (and should be) highly subjective and intricately tied to my life and the stories I’ve lived and heard. With that always in mind, my goal is to create work that runs and expands the channels that were laid before me—innovating without abandoning the groundwork I was gifted.