I explore the role of wonder and beauty in our search for knowledge, comfort, and security. Through optically rich material manipulations I fabricate objects of wonder and inquiry that regard the nature of truth and perception, and question established routes to understanding.

In my work, I am using the images of the city and windows. Viewers can read the reflected images of fragility and disconnection in my work. The window is a sign of human emotions. How can I make the viewer feel that we are disconnected and fragile? I think the windows and cities can be signifiers and mirror all emotions.

In the Caribbean, the Jumbie is a mischievous, mythical, ghost-like creature known for possession and other physical disturbances. Thought to be the souls of someone who has lived a violent life or died a violent death, practices such as exorcisms and prayer are performed in hopes of capturing and banishing these presences from their victims’ lives. The Jumbie's goal is not to harm or kill but to cause mischief and mayhem. Ever since I moved to the United States of America for college from the Caribbean, I have noticed a decline in my mental health. In my culture people reacted to mental health the same way they responded to the Jumbie, as a demonic possession that, according to them, could only be fixed through prayer. Once I became aware of that comparison, I began working on A Jumbie Quilt and Are You Seeing Jumbie, a children’s book that follows a girl, who discovers she has a Jumbie and takes account of how she moves forward with learning to live with it. In both of these projects, I use photography, digital collage, and fabric to explore what it means to preserve a hybrid identity while recounting the impact living in another country has had on my mental health. The quilt and the book serve as documentation of my relationship with the Jumbie and how we have grown from being strangers to becoming familiar with one another, I wish to create a dissonance that mimics the turmoil I feel as a person caught in between cultures and grasping for solace while battling an unknown foe.

Ceramic objects explore play, communication, and our relationships in the world. The work presents opportunities of interaction through enclosed spaces that incite moments of connection. Combining a visual dialogue of tubes, playground equipment, and gardens, abstract pieces are constructed in order to be completed through the interjection of the body. The work is not done until someone uses it, imbuing the objects with functionality. Scream, laugh, yell, whisper secrets to another; these objects present a fictional world that invites you to be curious and examine how you move through your surroundings.

Vulnerability, resilience, and empathy are emotional states that are displayed in the action of creating my work as well as the outcome of the sculptures throughout time. My work is ephemeral, as it changes, the material’s vulnerability is revealed. In my metal, cyanotype, and video performances there is a focus on everyday actions, the ‘gaze’, as well as movements and gestures related to dance. By researching performance and dance history, I make connections on how specific events influence performances and how personal emotions eventually factor into the art form. As part of my practice, I imprint my body onto a sheet of steel with coconut oil and use a torch and vinegar solution to rust the bare steel. The female body emerges and appears distorted to the viewer by the ephemeral qualities of oxidation on metal. People don't often associate metal to be vulnerable or rust to be beautiful. However, in my metal works, rusting steel is a beautiful medium to visualize emergence and growth. Through the process of making and watching my work change throughout time, I find the personal connection of watching my pieces grow and change while my mind and body are going through a similar process.

In my thesis exhibition, Hitting the Nail on The Head, my sculptural works examine how the ethics and morality of American society are shaped through our words. The idioms and sayings in the United States’ lexicon have a direct correlation to the development of our thoughts, actions, and understanding of the world and its citizens. Through my sculptures, I task the viewer with examining their use of common phrases like, “When in Rome, Do as the Romans Do”, and if it excuses insult based on lack of understanding with images of Hollywood icons ignorantly appropriating various elements of Black culture in America, in the form of postcards. In my video, “One Bad Apple Spoils the Barrel”, I present the viewer with categorical evidence that the commonly used alternative phrasing they have been hearing on television following tragic events, is an inversion of the truth with decomposing apples displayed in a time-lapse video. In my monument, “Thoughts & Prayers”, I confront the viewer with an assault rifle mounted to a mountain of 27 children’s bookbags covered in the candle wax to challenge the the 2nd amendment and what the years of political inaction has cost us in innocent lives.

I am Wolf Clan, from the Oneida Indian Nation of New York, a member of the Iroquois Confederacy. I often consider the things we pass down between generations. I grew up learning Iroquois craft techniques from my mother, aunts, and grandparents. I look at my hands when I am working with corn using traditional techniques and think about how they are the result of women’s hands working in the same way over many, many generations. Working with corn husk and corn products ties me to my lineage and it allows for a meditative state that creates space for me to consider my humanness and my connectedness to the past and the future. It represents knowledge about life and healing sent through time from my ancestral mothers. While working I reflect on the lives of my matrilineal ancestors, who they were and the challenges they faced. It is comforting and empowering to know my own life is proof of their ability to persevere through extraordinarily difficult circumstances. I gain strength and healing from acknowledging their presence in me and my life.

Moments of trauma mark pivotal shifts in my life that have forever altered my perception of self and reality. Coinciding with lifelong depression, these ailments are both a morbid source of inspiration and debilitation. My creative work is a means of articulating trauma and coping with dysthymic depression. Due to trauma’s unrepresentable nature I rely on engendered emotion as an intrinsic component in the creation of meaning. I construct empathetic experiences through sensory based affects that are understood through a compassionate engagement. These embodied translations of experience are my way of conveying that which is beyond conventional comprehension.

As we build new communities and heal old ones, we are presented with opportunities to collaborate with existing ecosystems. How can infrastructure be modified to promote resilient ecological communities that support each other and the overall biodiversity of the spaces we inhabit? Billboard Fields, Dumpster Agriculture, and Lap Siding are all examples of ways we can heal the socio-ecological disturbances that generally support humans but interrupt the ecology of the surrounding area. Lap Siding embraces vernacular architecture as a point of entry into both new and historically old material relationships with the land we build our homes on.

I am focused on the concepts of fallible memory after suffering a traumatic brain injury 8 years ago. Using paper-making and printmaking, I document my own personal memories in their fragmented state on handmade paper that I make from my own recycled prints. This handmade paper is then used to create prints using a paper lithographic printmaking method. Using these prints, I create a books and components for installations. The outcome of this research is displayed in my show Palpable Memory.