Artist’s Statement

The pieces of furniture that populate our homes are intimately related to the human body. Echoing our own shape and size, a bed or a chair can become a surrogate for our physical self, another figure in the room complete with a back or a head, arms and feet. When not in use their presence implies absence, and hints at a history of use or a narrative about to begin.

The mess of our biology remains unknown to most of us, hidden beneath the slipcover of our skin. Traditional anatomical studies and medical texts, bloodless and aestheticized, transform the intricate workings of the human body into delicate, legible images: tapestries of veins, pillars of bone, intestines following the line of a French curve. Where anatomy meets decoration, illness can be understood as a pattern disrupted, a design flawed, a composition out of balance.

Drawing on references to traditional craft, furniture, and medical illustration my work seeks to explore the thresholds between pathology and decoration, domestic comforts and abject fears, humor and pathos, material seduction and visceral unease.

A recent large-scale project was completed as an Artist in Residence at Gallery 263. The general form of the piece is based on a vintage chaise lounge; the general concept is that the couch is disemboweled, exploding, engulfing. It is inspired by period fainting couches, full-body effigies of saints, and that scene in Star Wars where Han Solo cuts open the taun taun corpse and stuffs Luke inside to keep him from freezing.