Embroidery piece of a wild Canada Goose, done on a green cotton background.
I’m interested in suggesting a new hierarchy by subverting the status of things. By changing the size of microorganisms which are seemed to be the smallest substance, I want this subversion to reaffirm our relationship with materials.
This piece is part of a series about lesbian relationships and how many people automatically sexualize them or treat them as something for their own pleasure. The series consists of obscured, nude portraits of me and my partner engaging in acts of intimacy or day-to-day activities. The nudity portrays the idea that no matter what we are doing, the viewer will see us in a sexual manner. To keep the photo from meeting the viewer's expectations, I removed those parts of the photo as a way to take control over what they can and cannot see. I hope to bring a sense of normalcy to lesbian relationships with this work and to help others with similar experiences feel less alone.
This work is thematically similar to "Lucid Landscape I". The reason for the subject matter in this comes from the vague similarities and differences western mesas have. Each, like a mountain, is visually define-able and can be grouped together has one geological structure. But they each have their own subtle difference, making each of the visually and structurally different from the last. This landscaped was formed from a collage of mesas creating one larger mesa. So instead of a painting that depicts a particular mesa, it is a painting of mesa in theory. Like the image a mind may make while thinking of what a mesa looks like.
I had recently inherited a bunch of books and magazines from my grandparent. Many of which were issues of "Country Beautiful", a magazine was dedicated landscape photography. Many of these images don't even seem to exist on a database or website even, making a lot of it's beautiful photography forgotten. One Issue I posses has these beautiful photos of the grand canyon with large cast shadows. They had me thinking about "who at all remembers these magazines, this issue, these photos", they were forgotten left in the back of the mind of those who read these magazines. The work is my attempt at reviving these landscape photos as abstract and lucid-like landscapes.
Is it an Actual Place or a Longing for its Comfort?
This painting was the result of thinking about- what is home? After leaving, returning, and thinking about what “home” is to me, I became fascinated with how home transcends an actual place. We can return home through memory and revisit its comfort without having to be there again. Every time I revisit my physical home, I feel like the structure itself starts to reconstruct in my memory.
PredvPrey was my reaction to fears surrounding the unknowns of COVID-19 with the simultaneous Fall 2020 decision by many states to send public schools back full-time with little precaution. Through my parents and close friends being public school teachers, I felt a need to communicate the dangers and fears of our younger generations becoming a combination of predator and prey towards each other in this setting, especially considering the uncertainties surrounding the science of the pandemic at the time. Distrust in our authority institutions was and is still of huge concern; how is all of this discourse being interpreted through the multitude of adolescent lenses? There was not much to do but let imagination and nightmares run wild.
Here I’ve taken Clotho, the Greek mythological “spinner” sister of the three Fates, and have transformed her into a selfish metaphor expressing my personal qualms with identity surrounding femininity and place in my surrounding world as a life-growing being. The duality within me both rejects and fights to assimilate the state of being pregnant that I may one day find myself in. This piece is also a visual representation of my inner contemplation of attempting to know who I am genuinely versus what I let myself be to be accepted in society.
Atropos, the Greek mythological sister of Fate also referred to as the “unturnable”, cuts the thread which Clotho spins and Lachesis allots. This cut signifies the fate of our death (which, funnily enough, I feel is the only certainty that kind of makes Lachesis obsolete!) In this piece I attempted to portray the concept of death in a constructive light. This interpretation of our fate as one-day decomposing almost non-beings and our discussions around this idea as reality I feel has been all but forgotten in modern, north-western society. I concern myself with the damages that our avoidance of the topic brings to our psyches come time when we are forced to face it. Rituals with which we were emotionally connected have been overshadowed by corporate greed to take advantage of our lack of pre-planning and knowledge of our true desires for ourselves and our loved ones in moments of loss. What we are suppressing can be a powerful emotional tool that deepens connection. Atropos’ existence represents this to me.