ARTIST STATEMENT

Karmanye vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana, Ma Karmaphalaheturbhurma Te Sangostvakarmani
 
The meaning of the Sanskrit verse is: You have the right to work only but never to its fruits. Let not the fruits of action be your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction.
 
Inviting, intrusive, elusive. Balancing the interplay between ephemeral and permanent, maximum and minimum, delicate and robust, alluring and aggressive.
 
Setting the stage.

  
I am a visual artist. I create large-scale sculptures and immersive installations. Persistence and repetition permeate both image and process in multimedia works. Three-dimensional drawings, rendered through different materials, mediums, processes and approaches are central to my work and result in engagements with sight and touch. The configuration, spatial orientation, and application of modified everyday objects activate the senses, emotions, and ideas to tell a story. The narratives within my work stem from personal experiences, broader ongoing social conflicts, and the fragility of life.
 
The catalyst for Dressed with D.R.E.S.S. was my diagnosis of Drug Reaction with Eosinophilia and Systemic Symptoms, a life-threatening allergic response to a prescribed medication. The work is a commentary on my personal, physical, social, and emotional journey. Through disruptive installations, it explores physical discomfort, engaging the viewers on a visceral level.
 
Where is the sky? was a site-specific installation that responded to my personal mental progression through this life-threatening severe immune response. The work is dynamic and monumental, incorporating assemblage paintings, distorted reflections, mirrors, pins, logs, powdered pigments, and unrecognizable fragments of furniture to confront the viewer with an all-encompassing sensory experience.
 
I also became sensitized to the “excesses” of consumerism during my illness. I incorporate discarded materials to create precarious installations that appear on the verge of collapse such as powder-coated shopping-carts, birdcages, broken windowpanes, etc. This interplay between three and two-dimensional forms is fundamental to my work.
 
It is obsession and repetition that characterize my art and working methods. In my multi-sensory installation A Million Marks of Home, I drilled through 281 panels of pinewood that lined the walls and juxtaposed them with a bed of 75 pounds of sifted red chili powder. The tactile surfaces and scent emanating from the drilled wood planks and red hot pepper were a visceral experience for the viewers.
 
My site-responsive installation Strength of Stele is a memorial of objects and spaces honoring the courage and spirit of the steel workers. The sculptures pay homage to their recollections of the Carrie Furnace within larger allusions to the passage and residue of time.