Recycled Materials, Glitter, Glue, String, Rhinestones, Steel, Plaster, Canvas, Acrylic Paint, and Wood
Dimensions Variable
2015
Artist Statement
I make sculptural installations out of a combination of recycled and purchased materials. Often, the ideas for the forms within my installations come from long walks around the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. As a museum educator, and art enthusiast, I spend countless hours absorbing popular motifs and forms used throughout time and across borders. For example, the idea for creating a vase form occurred after teaching John Singer Sargent’s Painting, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, and on the same day exploring a new Ancient Greek gallery. In each instance, the vase is given power through its size, decoration, and historical context.
The challenge was to take the idea of a vase and imbue it with new meaning. I wanted to take a common form and alter its understanding through both formal and thematic qualities. Often the shift of meaning in the work is derived from a mish-mash of sources of daily inspiration. For example, the fake flowers I selected to decorate the vase, are layered with meaning. Their vibrant color and soft touch give the work a feminine quality. However, these same flowers came from the recycle center, and speak to me about value, social class, and consumerism. The fakeness of the flowers speaks of artificiality and drought, while the color gradient and sparkling crystals pull from my adolescence and my love of fashion. All of these ideas are imbedded in the artwork because they constantly overlap in my everyday life. All I have to do is open the New York Times, and scroll between articles about factory pollution in China, the hottest trends of fashion week, and a sell out launch of the first Apple Watch. My artwork is an attempt to twist these ideas into a visual ecstasy that leaves me filled with guilt, lust, and ultimately confusion.
The meaning of the work is not a statement about, but more of a reflection of being a contemporary artist living in a complex society and coming to grips with the realities of today. The work is a hybrid, stealing references of the past, and mixing them in ascetic ways, with contrasting ideas of the present.