Artist Statement

Finding my way through small neighborhoods and back alleys, I document the discarded and mundane. Using the urban landscape and everyday bits and pieces found within it, I create objects and paintings like puzzles- beginning with the image as a whole, breaking it into parts, then attempting to put it back together. But the puzzle is never the same in the end; it becomes absurd and out of context- the pieces ramming into each other, multiplying in their volume.

I use my camera and craft store materials to build awkward contradictions of reality and illusion. There is a clunky quirkiness to my work; something is off, but you are not quite sure what it is - this is what I strive for. The photographs flatten out the three-dimensional objects I am recording and the materials recreate them. Not only am I using images of thrown out couches, I am also using the wood thrown in the dumpster to build the surface for the image. Repetition and transparency are used to create illusions within the pieces, but at the same time I spoil the illusion by keeping the seams visible between the paper cutouts, never trying to hide how it was built. I find a humorous beauty in the objects I encounter and I try to recreate that same unexpected combination within my work.