Sculpture & Objects

My practice as a visual artist, begins with illustration and painting. I’ve been drawing, painting, and making illustrations since I was a kid. But I’ve never felt confined to the surface of a canvas. For a long time I’ve been searching for ways for my images to come off the wall and enter the world as objects.

Sculpture grew out of that search.

Much of my sculptural work begins with found materials—objects from the hardware store, pieces of wood, nails, metal, clay. I’m interested in the everyday materials that people already live with. Working with these objects becomes part of the language of the piece. It’s a way of acknowledging that art does not have to be distant from life.

As a painter, much of my work has existed in the realm of image and aesthetics. Sculpture pushed me to ask a different set of questions. What does an object do in a space? What role does it play in the lives of the people who encounter it?

I’m interested in creating objects that function almost like public rituals. Something you interact with. Something that holds a presence. The kind of object that carries a story or a belief.

In some ways I think about them the way people think about the log at the Apollo Theater that performers rub before going on stage. (There is a history there) Or the Nkondi figures of Central Africa, studded with nails and layered with meaning through repeated acts of devotion.

These references inspire me to create my own versions of spiritual objects—pieces that invite interaction, reflection, and a sense of shared mythology within the spaces they inhabit.

Monument to Little Richard

Nashville Tennessee

Monument to Fisk Jubilee Singers
Nashville, Tennessee

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