Recent Shows
Recent group and juried exhibitions
This City Has An Undercurrent
Lowell Arts Center, Lowell, MI 2021
Cities are places of structure and control, seen visually in the architecture of the city- the powerful lines of the buildings, the bridges that stretch across our rivers, and in the taming of the rapids, marshlands, and forests that make our cities possible. However, our cities have an undercurrent. The natural water flow has been thwarted but now flows underground beneath malls and homes and reemerges wherever it can in scattered parks and streambeds. Similarly, we still see signs of the natural landscape that was paved over to build the city; cattails and wildflowers grow in roadside ditches while trees and curated gardens thrive in neighborhoods. These elements of the water beneath the surface and tamed plant life mirror the vulnerable elements of ourselves we must suppress in pursuit of a perfect veneer, the problems our cities are facing as times change and new issues arise. These swirling waters and the flora resurfacing in unexpected places, encompassed in the atmosphere of faded sunlight struggling through fog- they represent the things we put off because we fear what facing them would do to our carefully constructed image of ourselves.
Stories
Austen & Company, Columbus, OH 2021
This exhibition draws inspiration from the homes of our childhoods and illustrated books, drawing on their comforting and whimsical natures. However, presenting these elements with a twist and embedded within a tenebrous atmosphere to provoke a reexamination of our nostalgia.
Senior show
Calvin Center Art Gallery, Grand Rapids, MI 2018
I find comfort in the familiar iconography of my Midwestern upbringing. I love the nostalgic charm of a country home set against a backdrop of pine trees with an old washing machine abandoned in the woods. However, there is an ever widening gap between myself and the rural Ohioan community I grew up in. Over the past few years I have gone from largely agreeing with them to seeing the world very differently. Thus, whenever I return, I hope for that comfort of home but instead feel a deep sense of alienation.
My work explores this conflict, using Midwestern imagery to provide a familiar entry point into the pieces, I disrupt the sense of order within my work by arranging these elements in unusual ways and combining them with quiet forests, vast oceans, and towering mountains covered in cool mist, creating conflicting feelings of tranquility and chaos. An unsettling atmosphere and my own esoteric symbolism adds to the feelings of isolation and emotional turmoil.
While my work is deeply personal and introspective, it reflects the universal human experiences of both comfort and nostalgia but also loss and confusion.
My work explores this conflict, using Midwestern imagery to provide a familiar entry point into the pieces, I disrupt the sense of order within my work by arranging these elements in unusual ways and combining them with quiet forests, vast oceans, and towering mountains covered in cool mist, creating conflicting feelings of tranquility and chaos. An unsettling atmosphere and my own esoteric symbolism adds to the feelings of isolation and emotional turmoil.
While my work is deeply personal and introspective, it reflects the universal human experiences of both comfort and nostalgia but also loss and confusion.