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- I think a lot about the term body anxiety.
I think about sitting in the backseat of a car
as a kid in like shorts, right?
And you get up and like your leg just sticks to the vinyl.
Knowing that there's something about you
that might appear gross
to others is a pretty universal feeling.
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We're all like moving around in these flesh cages
that are essentially vulnerable.
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A lot of the processes I use in the studio are things
that exist, but also I kind of made up,
or I'm not using them exactly
the way that you're supposed to.
I do a lot of grinding metal and welding it together
and grinding it again,
and a lot of that is to avoid casting metal,
which is usually very expensive.
I'm often figuring out a new method
of what's often a very traditional process
and in that way I think of myself
as kind of a professional amateur.
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I can remember being in middle school, maybe even younger,
like 10 or 11,
and finding a book that my mom had that was like a history
of chair design.
I would kind of go through it
and mark all the pages with pictures that I was into
and you know, my parents noticed that
and got me a couple other chair books.
I became more interested in modernist design
and through that started working in mostly tubular steel.
It's a industrial material that's become
so ubiquitous, it's almost invisible.
A lot of the time when I start with a sculpture,
I'm thinking about something organic, interacting
with something that looks kind of industrial,
something soft and something hard.
I like that when something looks like it's being pushed
or pulled or squeezed in a sculpture,
that really is what's happening.
The silicone is being pushed or pulled
or squeezed in those directions.
- So the hottest part
is that tip, - Yeah.
- Right.
So I think if we, if we come in straight up
and down, you're definitely gonna get
that hot bit's gonna really like-
- Okay. - Droop over
- the more droop the better. - Whereas... yeah.
- I've also started working in glass.
The main difference is that it's kind of frozen in time.
In that moment of the sag or flop or squeeze.
My attraction to the gourds initially really came
from their like kind of unique warty texture.
It's rare to see fruit
or vegetable just come out of the earth
and already have this kind of diseased,
almost tumor like look.
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For these pieces
I was really thinking about adaptive structures
that we may or may not be aware of,
but are very ubiquitous in the built environment.
I was playing off of the handrails
that exist in a staircase
or might be the kind of ADA handrails
that are in a bathroom.
Most of my work comes from
two or three different reference points for me.
I was looking at Hector Guimard's
Paris train station streetlights.
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And I was also looking at the hoyer lifts
that you would use to lift someone
who might be bedbound from a bed to a chair.
I think with these objects there's this kind of knowledge
that if they're not something that
you require in your life now to be mobile,
you will at some point.
So we all have this relationship to them that is one
of kind of inevitability to a certain degree.
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My dad had ALS, which is a disease where
you slowly become completely paralyzed,
and so watching that progression happen,
these adaptive elements went from barely noticed parts
of the built environment to, you know,
really necessary elements to move around.
To me, there's this very visceral moment
that can lead itself to this kind of sculptural
way of thinking around the way that a body interacts
with the furniture and its environment.
These stilt sculptures,
they suggest a wearer who's essentially balanced
on these very precarious looking bird legs.
Navigating these equally dramatic
and difficult to use handrails.
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A lot of the pieces that I make, they are objects
that we are all familiar with,
but maybe out of context you take something
that is really familiar
and make it kind of visible again.
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