Bleak American Tradition is a suite of recent landscapes made with pigments, rain water and saliva during the winter solstice of 2020 in rural Kentucky. The title painting of this collection was made on the same afternoon that the insurrection of the U.S. capitol building took place: January 6th, 2021.
I seek the extraordinary in everyday changes and juxtapositions between human and non-human worlds. I try to make myself available to chance contact with these forces and allow their presence to influence and even collaborate in my practice. Recently, my painting practice has been focused on plants and trees as blind witnesses of history and silent participants in change. With my paintings and drawings, I use color and negative space as analogies for the vital forces of time that shape the human fields of perception and mood in relation to human and non-human events. I search for ways to release control of these forces as they pass through my senses and flow onto the surface as poetic ritual
Stills from various productions.
2024, Gallopalooza Commission for Kentucky Performing Arts Center
Objects was a series of works made in collaboration with Erik Pedersen and were made entirely from the detritus of a short film and album we made together using a single cassette tape.
Clay Hill Camera Obscura is a room size camera made in the aftermath of the Tornado outbreak of December 10–11, 2021. The Lens faces the path of the Tornado which ripped through the forest and over 200 miles of Kentucky landscape. The image of a young forest projects onto a 400+ year old gum tree cookie that fell during the tornado event.
Picture of the 400 year old gum tree that had fallen during the tornado.
A collaboration with Azucena Trejo, curated by Linsey Cummins, were installed at Louisville Grows as part of Louisville Visual Arts’ Curator Purchase Inspires Grant. Designed to be responsive to the environment, these ceramic sculptures will interact with elements such as rainfall and wind, producing subtle sounds and environmental shifts over time. This evolving installation invites viewers to experience the artwork not as a static object, but as a living component of the landscape and the built environment—shaped by nature, time, and chance.
