About

The work I do almost always uses recycled materials and ranges from sculpture, installation, social practice projects and public interactions. In all my pieces, I skew consumer roles and question ideas of value or exchange. What if instead of buying, we consume imagery in another way? Putting familiar materials into unexpected settings creates a different understanding of marketing and consumption in favor of more meaningful exchange.  

In collage pieces, I remove images from marketing materials then, sort and categorize them as a way to emphasize excess and highlight the unnecessary goods sold to us. The collage pieces become source material that I use to pattern or duplicate – digitally print or screen print on materials such as cloth, wood, wallpaper and giftwrap. In a sense, copying the collage work in this way makes for a more personal mode of replication, production and presentation. 

Sometimes, I focus individual product images and respond using shapes and color to enhance or adorn the photo. Doing this individualizes the mass-market item and brings a more personal interpretation or perspective to items that might otherwise be amassed, stockpiled or overlooked. 

With sculpture and installation, I use recycled materials to make objects or environments that reframe common settings and highlight disregarded items to reveal connections to larger systems, alternative economies and ideas of value. Sidewalks, cardboard boxes or beat-up trucks filled with paper on the way to the recycling center can show connections to commercial systems or focus on alternative communities and relationship to environment. 

In social practice, public projects and workshops, I encourage interactions around commerce, connections and value. Using recycled materials to produce “products” and engaging in barter or trading systems promotes more relational, less commercial encounters. Creating situations that encourage personal connections puts meaningful human contact in a position to counteract consumer culture and transform our normal systems of exchange.