statement

Currently my work envisions the specifics of a completely safe world, thereby both rejecting and lamenting the limitations of our ability to keep others from harm. Through recurring playful themes, I acknowledge the futility of these imaginings while keeping my work insistently hopeful.

I use early photographic processes and hand-draw my negatives using opaque pigments on mylar, and I include stenciled painting and collage components. The works are informed by a series of interviews with community members about rescue and safety.

In the images of cities, construction and destruction become a metaphor that asks whether our efforts to build a safer world are negated by an equal and opposite flow of disaster. I work with fragile papers that are damaged by my process and I systematically destroy and repair my negatives. As a result the works as objects, newly made but showing signs of disintegration, are materially truthful about the vulnerabilities their content denies.

I am a member of Tiny Circus, a community-based artist collective that makes stop-motion animations with diverse groups nationwide. I've taught drawing, bookmaking and alternative photographic processes to such disparate groups as inmates of the Newton Correctional Facility and students at M'Adamfo Pa Community Center in Accra, Ghana. I recently completed a four-month post-baccalaureate fellowship at Grinnell College, where I had a solo exhibition at the Edith Smith Gallery.  I am also the recipient of a full fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont.

bio

born:1988, Chicago, IL

education:

Grinnell College, BA, 2010

selected awards/honors

Full Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center 2011
Post-Baccalaureate Fellowship, Grinnell College, 2010

selected solo or two-person exhibits

Edith Smith Gallery: Safe World, Grinnell, IA 2010
Edith Smith Gallery: Safe Not Safe, Grinnell, IA 2010

selected group shows

Edith Smith Gallery: You Should Get My Autograph Now, Grinnell, IA, 2009
Chait Gallery: Small Works Show, Iowa City, IA, 2009
Faulconer Gallery: Salon Show, Grinnell, IA 2007