artist statement.

I remain fascinated by the phenomenon of belief and the psychological architecture that permits magical thinking to determine physical action and dictate material reality. Being born and raised in the tradition of Mormonism provides a fertile field of first-hand experiences available for excavation to ground relevant philosophical discussions of corporeal sensibility, gender, patriarchy, and virtual cognition –in an attempt to describe belief as a spectacle held in the body. Fidelity lies with biased first-hand experiences and loose associations framed in authoritative rhetoric –not in faithfully recounting church or family history. I am concerned with documenting spiritual diagrammatic space, analyzing gender roles in religious contexts, and wrestling with the notion of the spirit as a transducer within the physical body to connect to authentic dimensions of understanding.

My spiritual reframing has prompted an anxiousness to grasp something tangible to counteract the momentum of existential paralysis and somehow address the dead body that was once neatly stored in Mormon theology. Handling material has become an important practice to affirm being-ness and approach the inherent dilemmas of occupying space in contemporary America. Guided by tactile sensations and intuition –I pull away at the anxious forms preserved in stories, memories, and identities from my childhood by collaging, painting, rearranging, and sewing. Keeping my hands busy in this way has produced a spectrum of disparate visual information and encouraged the use of whimsical mediums like cheap acrylic paint, colored pencils, yarn, and felt. The Children’s Bible has been a vexing object of appropriation because of its vibrant illustrations, simplified narratives, and status as an educational tool to direct children to believe in god. Equally important are the historical connotations of the bible as a piece of technology containing data that, if used properly, would connect the user to divinity.

Adopting a child-like perspective has directed how to approach complicated topics through open-ended questions and introduced the element of play to help lower the stakes of art-making –reframing research as a curious activity that prioritizes experimentation. In the studio, it is important that constituent parts accumulate, separate, and synthesize across mediums to develop a history of engagement. Through a dedicated process of rearranging, a residual exchange between declared perimeters and surgically altered subjects attempts to reproduce the phenomena of inexplicable belief, naïve narratives, and the complicated context of American life. It is my hope that teasing out areas of friction with these subjects will raise questions that motivate further exploration and questions concerning authenticity, reproduction, and belief.