About the Artist

My work focuses on the exploitative relationship people have with the natural world and how this relationship shapes the manufactured landscapes around us. Growing up immersed in the natural wilderness of northern Michigan before moving to the domesticated urban area of southeast Wisconsin gave me an outsider perspective on the way cities and their infrastructure are created and experienced by their inhabitants. By reducing living elements of the natural world to mass-produced utilitarian objects, we are initiating a subconscious struggle to reconcile society's stated reverence for nature with the unnatural environments we create in the name of progress. My focus on the imagery of disfigured trees and utility poles against backdrops of devastated, empty, or non-existent landscapes is symbolic of the psychic and physical void this conflict leaves on the tangible world. Oftentimes my work will delve into overtly political imagery which serves as a further statement against the hidden costs incurred by the rapacious consumption and paranoid political climate of modern American life.

My two-dimensional work is executed on stained and finished wood panels reclaimed from cast-off or broken furniture. Employing reductive intaglio techniques from my printmaking background, I use tools like scrapers and engraving burins to remove the layers of old finishes, stains, and veneers with the objective of adding as little as possible back onto the piece. Just as nature is reduced to create these objects, I further reduce the objects to reveal their true nature. My series of surveillance camera sculptures are mixed media pieces which employ a striking contrast between materials and subject matter to grab the viewer's attention. These sculptures highlight the pervasiveness of state surveillance by confronting their subjects face to face rather than watching from the background as these devices normally do.