Artist Statement
I am exploring how my experiences are connected to everyday objects. In modern society, we are surrounded by a variety of objects, and we unconsciously consume commodities of our own choice on a daily basis. I believe that we make decisions about our clothing, food, and everyday requirements based on a feeling of intimacy and sympathy with the products. Unexpectedly, the mundane objects around me can trigger vivid nostalgia that causes memories to flow through my mind in obscure fragments. These fragments replay in my head, repeatedly, in specific situations, becoming malleable and animated. While imagining a particular scene and transforming the object, I confront my own experience and engage in a personal, ever-growing relationship with the object. The objects I chose to represent are selected because they are close at hand and because they are mine.
As a glass artist, it takes skill to take something as intangible as experience and reshape it into glass art. However, no matter how much my technique improves, I know that I can do better and that is why I fight with materials that allow me to endlessly accumulate experience, which is my main theme. I always seek new invigoration and try to make pieces that deepen thought and give off positive, curious feeling. The discipline required to convincingly create an object in glass demands that I spend a long concentrated period of time making that object. This time becomes a meditation of sorts allowing me to focus on the object and the original experience that formed my inspiration.
