Pieced together in woodworking, sculpture and printmaking, I build objects that create a moment of reckoning. Something stands at a precipice; someone reaches out to touch the forbidden fruit.

I go to lengths in my practice to define materials and processes that symbolize existing in a queer body, both sapphic and gender-fluid, that moves as a politically queer entity, at odds with the white conservative Christian indoctrination in which I was raised. Being closeted for so long in that environment created a life filled with high contrast: coverage and exposure; cruelty and mercy; atonement and trespass; limits and permission; pain and pleasure; sacrament and desecration; despair and salvation; isolation and connection; pure and dirty; security and risk.

My materials exhibit a style and sensibility that is tied closely to the freedom I’ve found in unconditional queer love with my spouse Loren, and my queer community. I embrace a sense of style that was systematically squashed out of me in my years of Catholic school and forced Christian observance— that style now contrasts, mimics and subverts the serious, conservative Christian indoctrination of my past.

Let the style be a list:

black leather
plum faux vegan leather
gold in nostrils, septums, on fingers, the caves of the ear
stained glass
hot pink light
rabbit fur
suede