About

My studio practice is structured around creative limitations of space, time, and precarious access to material, all of which I have experienced as a teaching artist. My artworks are materials-driven and sourced from what is immediately available to me, such as found objects, fiber, animal bone, and other organic materials. In addition to these materials I use clay, wax, metal and other plastic materials, relying heavily on patina, and external forces of flame and heat to communicate a visual state of change. I create work that explores existential issues of environmental decomposition, reconstitution, and the seemingly cyclical nature of human history. With this in mind, I find that clay, wax and cast metal exist in symbiosis with my thought process as these materials are in a constant state of becoming, often surrendered to external forces beyond my control. I ultimately celebrate the passage of time, finding a beauty in devastation. I strive to see my work as a form of symbolic communication, which ultimately I stress as a value to young artists. Getting beyond rendering representational images or objects and thinking more about articulating a creative intention through material, access, time and process.

 My Teaching Philosophy

My practice as an art educator is to enhance my student’s learning experiences by approaching the art curriculum as a visual language subject to their own individual cultural expression. I center my praxis on the principles of constructivism, or student generated knowledge. In doing so, I create a classroom environment of inquiry-based learning and observation to foster student led innovations within the structure of a core curriculum. As a resident teaching artist I have facilitated integrated arts curriculum alongside classroom teachers. Among other examples, my work at Edward Williams Elementary School, in New York, focused on ceramics as a tool to explore mathematics, using this medium as a conduit to calculate surface area of basic three dimensional shapes.

Additionally, my work as a museum educator has allowed me to more freely explore tactics in convergent and divergent learning processes with school aged students. During my time at the Children’s Museum of the Arts, in New York City, I was able to incorporate movement as an inclusive non-verbal observational tool to help students with diverse sets of needs to describe work in the gallery alongside studio workshops. To overcome the economic limitations that I have faced as a contemporary educator with a limited budget, I pair guided art making lessons with use of site specific materials anyone can find in their own environments. Although I do believe in a strong foundational, and developmentally specific, understanding of visual arts in a classroom setting, it is important that my students are free from self imposed limitations. Regardless of whether or not my students will go on to become visual artists, it is my goal to impart an alternative approach to learning and recording information, in this sense I see this pedagogical approach as one rooted in creative problem solving.