Faculty portfolios

As an artist who grew up in a rural area of the American South, I am inclined in my work to explore issues of labor, class, the aesthetics of rural experience, and American domesticity. Visualizing typical domestic situations allows me to discuss the ways in which we insist on surrounding ourselves with objects of both comfort and terror.

I employ the techniques of painting and drawing as a way to render these objects. I agree with Bruce Nauman, who once stated that "art is a means of acquiring an investigative attitude." In my words, through research and site-specific responses, I can create artworks that stimulate further questioning. My research interests include the art and writings of William Morris; the Soviet Socialist designers of the early 20th century; folk art and decorative patternings as visual 'background noise;' issues of labor and worker struggles worldwide; and the visual display of political propaganda.

I aim to slow down a capitalist sense of time by making art 'products' with a shelf life: wall drawings (which are painted over after the exhibition), expendable consumer items (paper plates, butcher paper, cheap fabric lampshades), and performative exhibitions of mundane tasks (a haircut, a nap). I hope to elevate and prolong the ephemeral, however briefly, so that we may recognize the absurd impulses in our own behavior.