As we move, experiences become more fragmented. Are we moving forward? At inconsistent points of transitions in speed, perspectives blur. Are we seeing clearly?
I blur boundaries between the analog and the digital, the public and the private, and the unassuming and the instigative. I use my own experiences and sense of identity as a lens through which I explore the introspective and social processes of contemporary culture. Through an analytical deconstruction of these processes, my approach both incorporates and critiques elements of the fields of anthropology, sociology, and psychology. My concept-driven projects all incorporate the core belief that art can and should be used as a tool for generating critical thinking, dialogue, knowledge sharing, and understanding between individuals with divergent world perspectives.
My practice seeks to investigate social constructs. A social construct is a mechanism or category developed by society that forwards perception of an individual or group that is created culturally as opposed to biologically. Social constructs include gender, race, religion, and many other groupings. These social constructs are perpetuated by how a child is raised, language and other communication practices, and visible signs including advertising, popular culture, and education. While there are some innocuous impacts of social constructs, there are also many negative aspects, including sustaining systemic racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. My intent is to foster dialogue about the multiple, intersecting forms of social construction in our culture and the pervasive, dominant narratives perpetuating them.
Memory is an important material with which I work. When I was 17 years old, I was in a near-fatal car accident. My biological function of remembering has since been unreliable to the point where it becomes difficult to distinguish between memory's relation to fact and memory's relation to fiction. With age comes an exponential acceleration of memory obsolescence; faster and faster. Just as I was extricated from that automobile in 2003, each attempt to disentangle my brain's own remembering functionality is an attempted extrication of reality from my flawed recollection.
Inspiration in my practice is represented as ideas passing through the filters of social construction, memory, and perspective. The result of that filtering then dictates the materials and methods through which concepts are expressed, displayed, and discussed.
Originally from Arizona, I have also lived in Chicago, Flagstaff, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and France and currently reside in Roswell, New Mexico. With the experience of being a self-taught artist since 2002, I received my Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2017. I have exhibited my art extensively across the United States. My work has received awards from the Anne Bremer Memorial Library and the Auburn Art Gallery in California, the Foundry Art Centre in Missouri, and the Reece Museum in Tennessee. My work has been approved for inclusion in public art programs in Palo Alto, California and Santa Fe, New Mexico.In 2019, my work in Social Boundaries made me a San Francisco Arts Commission finalist. I was an artist-in-residence at High Concept Labs in Chicago 2020-2022. I became an artist member of Amos Eno Gallery in New York in 2020. My 2025 solo exhibition there, Contact Traces, was named “High Brow/Brilliant” in New York Magazine’s The Approval Matrix. On the occasion of that exhibition, I was interviewed by Noah Becker for Whitehot Magazine and I was featured in Hyperallergic's A View from the Easel.
My curatorial practice grew organically out of my artistic practice in 2009 and I've been collaborating with other artists since. I was the curator and interim director of the art gallery at San José State University in California 2017-2019 where I curated several the exhibitions, including Reinterpretation as Resistance: Artists Questioning Normative Iconography. I am currently the curator of collections and exhibitions at the Roswell Museum. There I co-curated the contemporary art exhibition Future Shock: (Re)Visions of Tomorrow featuring artists from around the world, amongst many other curatorial projects. I also launched new exhibitions, including regional collaborations with peer institutions to highlight underrecognized artists like Patrociño Barela and invitationals to recent graduates of nearby MFA programs to amplify the voices of emerging artists like Dina Perlasca. I have served on many juries, including the New York Foundation for the Arts’ Medical Emergency Grant, the Roswell Artist-in-Residence program, and Southwest Contemporary’s 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now.
Photo: Analog Selfie circa 2018
