STATEMENT
My artistic practice is primarily concerned with the investigation and subsequent remediation of my experiences growing up queer within a family and a culture that both foundationally reject queerness. I employ the familiarities of heirloom and the ubiquity of southern detritus in order to deploy a narrative that runs counter to the dominant ideologies I was steeped in growing up in rural Mississippi. Utilizing both found and fabricated objects as communicators of information, I create immersive installation work that simulates the performativity of domestic spaces and questions the ways we attach gender to both material and making.

By implementing a wide array of traditionally gendered practices, I explore instances where gender ends with the object but begins in the labor itself. Cast metal, welded grids, and hand-shaped furniture meet quilt pieces, embroidery samplers, and sewn garments to create richly layered installations that complicate relationships between gender and labor. A wooden structure, square stock, and a rendered pastoral scene might conjure some latent idea of domesticity; green velvet and a Gideon bible might serve as a projected set for performance. I make use of found objects as interrogators of identity within both individual works and larger installation, often including my own possessions as tools of relativity. Objects can be personal, practical, and political: a teacup - a symbol of my relationship to my grandmother, a table - an illustration of my family unit, a cicada shell - a metaphor for my transness. In the synthesization of these varied elements, I hope to dismantle and subvert cultural conformity as well as contextualize and celebrate my identity.

I view my sculptural practice as interdisciplinary and exploratory, and enjoy utilizing various processes both physical and digital - feedback loops of materiality and immateriality. Welding, woodworking, quilting, photography, embroidery, projection, casting, painting, and printing are a few of the various mediums I find myself integrating, overlapping, and exploring in the context of my conceptual framework. Working across media is crucial to my sculptural practice as it allows me the fluidity to manipulate objects and consequently explore and subvert their meanings just as well as it affords me the continual opportunity to learn and play.