ARTIST STATEMENT

I often look at myself as a jeweler. I am one who crafts with precious metals and molds them into wearable adornments. I also feel that I am a researcher, a small historian, and a messenger of stories from the past. I, time and again, look back to bring forward my pieces to tell the stories and histories of girls and women who have been lost or are not known well enough across global history. From their pasts and achievements, I want to provoke the viewers of my work to question the why and how of these women and to want to better understand them. 

Through research, planning, and fabrication, I create work modeled after and for these women as a dedication to them. After I research and sit with these women in my mind for some time, I draw inspiration from the cultural designs and history that would have been prevalent in their time and combine them with symbolistic contexts from their lives to create their pieces.

I carve wax and work clay to bring out and discover these symbolic forms reminiscent of how these women worked to shape their lives and environments to have what they loved and desired. Through my work, I find them after they have found themselves: after they have carved and worked their way into history only to be forgotten or have their identities changed.

I feel myself at my own crossroads in life, and like these women before me, I want to take hold of it.