What symbols and patterns contribute to how we consider our social worlds? How do ways in which we ‘carve’ up our environments vary across time and space? How can I create art that de-familiarizes and unmasks aspects of our lives that we take for granted? These are questions that have guided my art practice throughout the past few years and will continue to evolve in complexity. I examine the underlying social conditions that influence our patterns of behavior and how we navigate the world around us.
Formation and deconstruction of visual language lies at the center of my practice. The transcription and layering of shapes, text, signs, and symbols over one another in a 2D field establishes new relationships and takes on multiple meanings. My drawings are dismantled representations of social reality. Oftentimes, we tend to think of social reality as natural and inevitable. However, when we break down societal norms, we can recognize that every institution that we operate within is a product of social activity. The structures that are woven together in my compositions may seem natural, but upon further investigation, they are actually products of careful arrangements. The local interactions between patterns become less important in favor of serving an overall structure that takes center stage. The instability and obsession readable in the small-scale marks becomes gradually more stable the further one distances themself from the piece.
In my labor-intensive work, I transcribe/translate small patterns, textures, and symbols sourced from my surrounding environments over and over again. These discrete individual components of the drawing or print do not add up to create an easily digestible image. Instead, the accumulation of overlapping patterns generates a complicated and over-saturated surface. Compositions are inward-facing: they contain a build up of lines and textures based on initial reference points that come from the physical world. Combined together, they create forms and imagery that are both readily available and crowded with information. What initially reads as ‘normal’ translates into chaotic scenes that are both part of, and separate from, the piece as a whole. Seemingly simple shapes become distorted and disorienting as I introduce select colors and marks. Similar to artists Ginny Bishton and Vija Celmins, scale is a crucial element of the work. With no clear beginning or end to the overlapping patterns, there is a sense that time is being collapsed and folded in on itself. It is a challenge to map out any sort of logical order as to how the final image was produced. The emphasis on process over product and the use of repeated hand movements is durational and connected to the passing of time. The accumulation of marks functions as a form of copying and pasting, rooted in a self-imposed standard of rules that serve as the structure of each drawing. Repetitive mark making parallels the unconscious acquisition of knowledge, skills, views, and attitudes that control and direct an individual’s actions.
Figuration further complicates and disrupts space and blurs any division between foreground and background. The decorative textiles that consume the bodies are similar to biological cells or organs in that they participate in a relationship of their own that is autonomous—they flow in and out of one another, overlap, and compete for space. The patterns of these networks spread and proliferate amongst the figures. I am more focused on the interconnections and interdependencies of these figures and their entanglement within a complex web of relationships, rather than showcasing singular actions or individuality. The narrative that is created through the patterns that envelop the figure is more performative and involved than the figures themselves. The proliferation of suffocating marks overwhelms the subjects and camouflages them into an unstable middle ground. The self is framed as an ongoing performance and part of a socially patterned experience, vulnerable to disruption and reliant on others to confirm selfhood. The intensity of these drawings takes something fleeting, like an interaction, and turns it into a durable object comprised of repurposed, replicable, and copied patterns. The social and cultural forces that constrain these individuals can make it seem as if they are powerless puppets. Even though they appear as independent and separate, the marks embed them in a web of interdependency, linking them to a broader network.
Our sense of self is patterned by the social world: our hopes, dressing, connectivity, and traits are all habits and routines shaped by modernity. However, my repetitive mark making allows for these structural forms to not seem like unchangeable forces—the structures and institutions that they create are products of human nature. As the symbols and patterns transform throughout the drawings, the structure itself changes to become another part of the composition.
In terms of future directions for my work, I see myself continuing to uncover ways in which I can use drawing to form alternate approaches to communication. My goal is to become well versed in fabrications to create large-scale installations situated in public places that blur the boundary between intimacy and distance. I seek to create art that is accessible to a wide audience and situated in spaces directly next to the visual symbols that they reference and challenge.