I graduated from the Milwaukee Institute of Design in 2022 with a BFA in New Studio Practice. My work focuses on feelings of uncertainty and anxiety, exploring how structure can either trap us within or provide us security from our fears. Not often are pedestrians given the power or circumstance to change the buildings and infrastructure that they contort to accommodate. Instead, they opt to negotiate the physical and mental barriers left in architecture's wake. How do these designs influence us? What happens when these systems begin to break down?
I explore these questions by painting familiar structures in uncanny scenarios. Sweeping gestures and shifting perspectives diverge from notions of permanence in conventional architecture. I focus on houses, apartments, and the spaces in-between to examine clashes between design and lived reality on a more intimate level. Parking lots, alleys, telephone poles, ladders and other "junkspace" features are particularly interesting to me because they speak to the unintended side effects of modern design.
My work reconciles the mystical nature of the world and a desire to understand it. Buildings, windows, and skylines in my landscapes are pieced together as easily as they are abandoned. The city exists in a state of permanent evolution, where the laws of gravity and depth of space remain in flux. To navigate the chaos, you must tow the line between the empirical and the arbitrary.
Although I break architectural tropes and ridicule them through my work, I also rely on them. They contextualize my forms and marks, acting as a schematic for the city. The silhouettes of windows, for example, turn a rectangle into a building; converging planes and atmospheric perspective can act as a grounding force across the scene. The same goes for materials like sand, concrete, steel, and wood glue, which reinforce the context in which my absurd creations are born.
Buildings meld, fade, and overlap with their surroundings. Accumulations of grit and pigment or the spray of a dampened brush are curated, but not tamed. Incompatible views are allowed to exist on the same plane. Sculpture and painting live together. Do these inconsistencies keep us from seeing the city in any one, complete form, or are they essential to the landscape itself?
