I am a multimedia artist who creates portals to other dimensions, often with the goal of repairing my inner child or connecting with communities. Inspired by the symbolism of Greek mythology, my depictions began as highly embellished memorials of stolen trans people as a way of reclaiming their lives on this plane but grew to wearable metalworks, installations and furniture. In the final semester of my BFA, I discovered my own roots in Greek mythology, while working with laser etching, memories emerged of growing up in Ithaca, New York, a town rich with ancient Greek symbolism. My own rebirth (through a series of circumstances as well as navigating newly surfacing memories of C-PTSD) brought me to an affinity with Persephone and the continual cycle of life and death. Through laser etching hand drawn images onto mirrors, I was able to create works that reflected this well guarded past.
Since graduating from UNM in 2022, I have continued my love affair with glass. Creating reverse laser etched mirrors, often gilded with foil leaf, captures the style of my hometown of Ithaca, NY, rich with art deco and art nouveau architecture and design. Laser etching glass creates “ghosts” that project when light filters through them, the same “ghosts” that reflect in mirrors when exposed to light. These projections remove the objectivity of my work, allowing all who witness my shadows to possess them momentarily, while simultaneously proving that no one permanently can. I have also fallen in love with oil painting on glass using pigments, which aid in antiquating my palette, and create a sense of time lapse within my work. Together, my pieces strive to create places of beauty and connection informed by my childhood that was not.
My pigments were purchased at the estate sale of a late transcendental writer and artist, a sale I worked personally. Not one to order painting supports, I prefer to find them at the estate sales I work, allowing me weeks to connect with their previous owners. This evolution of my work has increased my relationship with my queer ancestors, particularly, a great uncle who was disowned from my then Southern Christian conservative family for being gay. He was also an artist, antique collector and gardener. Like me, he grew up poor and often struggled with having a stable income, yet somehow knew how to surround himself with the finest things (through being an estate’s caretaker). In this process, my work has stepped away from queer human bodies and moved on to reflect the queerness of the flora and fauna of upstate New York that protected me as a child, to the global species in peril and species lost, including humanity, to the human response of late stage capitalism, and to the natural continual apocalypse of the earth hirself.
