Artist Statement
Our bodies are inhabited by our surroundings while our bodies inhabit our land. There is no such thing as a closed system. By domesticating the land, we have separated ourselves from the natural ecological systems. Concrete and steel suffocate the soil and form conduit drainage systems. When it rains heavily in NYC, the water mixes with bio-waste, and the untreated sewage is discharged into the rivers of the New York harbor, making our urban landscape a hazardous depository. These are my materials. (Read about the recent Potomic sewage spill, NPR 02/20/2026)
My work can take on either a violent or a restorative connotation. Albert Einstein said, “All our lauded technology, our very civilization, is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal”. The violence of the industrial age must move into a healing period.
Our environment is inside us as we breathe, drink, and even hear; it has a physiological and mental effect on us. I like to see my work as personified bodies or systems that eat, sleep, breathe, and defecate.
Through aesthetic attraction, I invite people into a discourse of urban development and its effects on natural resources. I collect discarded goods such as charred architecture beams, steel, shredded office documents, and plastic containers. Other materials, like plant seeds, give a sense of hope through phytoremediation. I use the languages of painting, sculpture, photography, video, and audio. They grow or perish or simply transform through their own system. The process is unavoidable.