In my work, I use durational processes of building, craft and material transformation as a time-based method and diseased wood, ecosystem-specific trees, inherited building materials or other exhausted objects as material. I create works that expose the complex ways in which things and people are suspended in worlds together, often generating forms that push beyond human frames of reference. The work begins when an object changes just enough that it crosses a culturally inscribed threshold or category. I am interested in highlighting the mutability of objects in this way, and drawing out material-through-lines that press outward, or perhaps cut across, the conceptual boundedness of objects. Through this, I hope to demonstrate a material-centered perspective of reality over an object-centered one. A material-centered view is one that assumes something is always enroute to becoming something else or that recognizes material constancy even when an object’s status changes. For example, I use the process of wood carbonization to reveal the elemental existence of carbon in lumber. Lumber is a material named and utilized by humans for human consumption and is thus a cultural form. Carbonization points to the constituent material’s presence as existing long-prior-to and well beyond any human scale timeframe. It is my belief that a material-centered perspective works against our tendency to reduce things to signifiers, lived experiences, concepts, sensations or hunches. In this, no matter how defined things seem to be, they always hold the hope of being other than that. For me, this perspective engenders hope for transformation or adaptation on many levels, so that all things seemingly bounded may challenge the networks of power aiming to hold them there.
As an appropriate extension of the above-mentioned concepts and processes I have been consistently drawn to collaborative relationships where ecologies of practice are revealed, made visible and durational. In other words, collaboration highlights inter-subjectivity, the awareness of others, both human and other-than-human, which results in a deep engagement with context. Object, material, event, tool, time, self and other are all subjects and are all becoming.
I am currently collaborating with Chicago-based artist Amber Ginsburg, Aotearoa New Zealand-based artist Raewyn Martyn.
I am is also a member of Deep Time Chicago, an art, research, and activism initiative whose goal is to explore one core idea: humanity as a geological agent, capable of disrupting the earth system and inscribing present modes of existence into deep time. The collective knits together group readings, guided walks, lectures, panels, screenings, performances, publications and exhibitions.
Additionally, I am a founder of the teacher’s collective Project Fielding, an organization that empowers women and gender variant people of all ages through skill-camps and design/build workshops that teach hand and power tool use and context-responsive design.
I received my MFA from the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago in 2006, acted as the director of the arts division at Antioch College from 2010 to 2014 and am currently assistant professor of sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I have also taught sculpture at Northwestern University; the Ox-bow School of Art; South Suburban College; have coordinated and led an arts apprenticeship workshop at the nonprofit Street-Level Youth Media in Chicago; served as a member of the visual arts faculty at the Gary Comer Youth Center; and taught 3-D visual language and experimental design at the University of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology, respectively. Additionally, I was a co-founder and owner of a social center and cafe at the Experimental Station in Chicago, called Backstory.
I have given talks and presented workshops at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Harvard University, SAIC, DePaul University, Columbia College, and more. My work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in a variety of spaces including Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, The Smart Museum of Art, Gallery 400, Hyde Park Art Center, ThreewallsSOLO; Portland’s Museum of Contemporary Craft; New York’s Park Avenue Armory, and Eyebeam; Boston’s Tuft University Gallery; Minneapolis’ Soap Factory, and more. My work has been exhibited in Scotland at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop and my collaborators and I will represent the United States in the upcoming Thailand Biennial.
M.F.A., Sculpture and Installation, University of Chicago
B.A., Environmental Studies and Visual Art, Evergreen State College
B.F.A., Sculpture, Painting, and Art History, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire