statement

The representation and application of memory and objects depict our identity.  I try to create a visual of objects and memories of experiences that evoke a sense of psychological confusion.  Memories give meaning to our character, leaving us with fragmented, altered, and isolated images from which to base our identity on. My work explores the fluidity of memory, our sense of reality and our malleable personal identity.

Obscurity is explored through the function of vision, memory, and recall. We first explore images through vision and we then interpret this information by manipulating it mentally.  There is further interference when an idea has attempted to become memory.  This initial memory is severed and modified, and our imagination combines things known, unknown, past, present, and future. There is fluidity in memory and our sense of reality.  The moments explored in my work show daily life in the struggle between distraction and meaning.  The collection of images becomes an agglomeration of memory, imagination and misinformation that I have collected over time. Through this glut of imagery and items, I am interested in evoking the past, while fictionalizing it.  

With my collection of objects and memories, I actively display their interactions through clusters or collision points.  At these peaks of pivot the images process themselves and become a device.   The device becomes an unrestrictive metaphor for the function of the mind and by hybridizing imagery they demonstrate a range of functions.  They inform themselves while creating and destroying their experience.  

The dream plays an intricate role in how we store and retrieve memory; it is also a time for us to create our own imagery that is not tied to rules of reality.  Our dreams are a conglomeration of the firing of the central nervous system as we sleep, and our experiences help us put these things together.  I am interested in our ability to freely associate among our own memories and ideas, while we dream.   These associations are more loose and intuitive and are non linear.  I take aspects of reality and logic, to invoke the invisible.  

My work is a constant exploration between the internal and external.  I am fascinated with memory because it is an example of where a moment outside continues to exist inside and helps depict the way we think about our lives.  Through my investigation, I find that memory exposes the unclear path of imagery that is formed to create our identity.  This instability leaves us with a constant changing self and memory as an impressionable web that is changed by the second.

bio

born: 1988, Tecumseh, Michigan

education

Kendall College of Art and Design, MFA Painting, 2012
Ashland University, BFA Painting, 2012

selected awards/honors

Scholarship of Merit, Kendall College of Art and Design, 2012
Transformation: 3rd Place Award, Wellspring Church Annual Juried Exhibition, 2011

selected publications

Linus Gallery, Long Beach Pasadena, CA, 2012
John Collins Gallery, Grand Rapids Community College, MI, 2012
Kendall College of Art and Design, traveling show, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing China, 2012
"DeVos Place hosts KCAD's 2011 MFA juried exhibition," Examiner, MI, 2011

selected group shows

Motion, Linus Gallery Exhibition, Long Beach, Pasadena, CA, 2012
Strokes of Genius, Maryland Federation of Art, Annapolis, MD, 2012
84th Regional Exhibition, Muskeegon Museum of Art, Muskegon, MI 2012
BBAC 2012 Michigan Fine Arts Competition, Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, Cranbrook, MI, 2012