How do you describe your own art practice?
I keep a lot of sketchbooks. Eventually certain thoughts or images rise to the top and wind up becoming something more involved. I work in a lot of different mediums so I’m always trying to stay open to whatever the most interesting thing going on in the room is. I might set things up to paint a still life, but the strange assembly of objects held together with prayers and string might be the better thing, the better experience. But that openness can present lots of pitfalls too because the dust bunny in the corner is always threatening to become more interesting than the whole endeavor – so that’s a huge problem!
Walkway Fragments
Which question or theme is central in your work?
Where do creatures go when they die? How does an insect experience a garden? What is it like to be a drill or a machine moving through the earth?
Lost Body
What was your first experience with art?
The first real thing I remember making was a chair for my mom from a broken up wooden fruit crate. I can’t remember the first time I felt like I was looking at ‘art’ but I remember going to the Moma a lot in the late 90s as a student and it always being very dark and empty and quiet. I loved Giacometti’s small wooden sculpture The Palace at 4 am, and there was a room with an Ellsworth Kelly grid of colored squares near a Francis Bacon painting of a baboon screaming. Everything felt really important.
Dinosaur
What is your greatest source of inspiration?
‘Late Night One Pan Egg Sandwich”
Soil Festivities Mound
What do you need in order to create your work?
Pentel Twist-Erase Mechanical Pencil
Soil Festivities (first performance)
What work or artist has most recently surprised you?
I don’t really go see much art. It doesn’t feel like that’s where you go right now if you want to see something surprising. For that, it feels like the real world has the art world beat. That said, I was surprised by a Wayne Thiebaud show I saw recently because I never really liked his work, but the show changed my mind. I like him now. I also heard someone on the radio the other day, speculating that piles of trash might be inhabited by faeries. Now that was a surprise.
Soil Festivities
