Where are you currently based?

I’m currently based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Describe your style in three words.
Self-Replicating, Iterative, Oscillating.

What led you to create your work, "Very Heavy”?
Very Heavy was created throughout a series of different intervals over the course of a year and the work went through a handful of iterations. I typically work on multiple pieces at the same time, as working on one particular piece can help me resolve issues within another. In the case of Very Heavy, it was a process of adding drawn and painted materials, then breaking it apart and reassembling it and repeating this process until it reached its final embodiment. The process itself is pareidolic as I’m finding the latent faces amongst the work’s surface. It’s that same pareidolic experience that I aimed to capture in Very Heavy and transmit to the viewer. There’s a feeling of life emerging from an environment and a feeling that the environment is coming alive. The work plays with the idea of a face functioning as a space.

Could you walk us through the concept behind your work, “Very Heavy”?
The creation of Very Heavy is an exploration in the boundaries between figure and ground and how this is experienced through our tendency to find faces all around us. It was important that the piece hovered somewhere between a painting and a sculpture to engage the viewer in a specific way. By extending parts of itself into the third dimension, Very Heavy establishes itself as sharing the same space as the viewer. As it retreats parts of itself into the background, it simultaneously separates itself from the viewer. The distinction between various faces is intentionally obscured and overlap. The figures are engaged in an act of co-creation where every facial feature within the piece is shared amongst each figure that emerges. Paradoxically, the viewer must allow one face to recede in order for another to emerge.

What have been the main sources of inspiration for your works?
A few of my main sources of inspiration share a common quality of being in a certain mode of thought. Reading and listening about myths is one of my continued sources of inspiration. What interests me about myths is not so much their particular narratives, but instead their creation of imagery that pushes the imagination outside of its normal bounds. Through descriptions such as Typhon in Greek mythology (with his two hundred hands consisting of fifty serpent-headed fingers on each hand) or the biblical depiction of Ophanim (fiery configurations of wheels within wheels that are covered in eyes) I challenge myself to visualize how they would look. I’m someone who frequently dreams and I find that they function in a similar way to myths. I’m less interested in the particulars of any given dream and more interested in the process of blending edges. It’s important for me to be in a state of free association while I’m working and these concepts help me to do so.

Are there any other upcoming projects you would like to share with our readers?
Yes, me and my partner Gabby have been working on an experimental project, BELLY ACHE, that extends my work into various book formats. A few of these formats include zines, hand-made books and boxsets. We will be exhibiting at the Boston Art Book Fair 2022 from November 4th through the 6th presented by the Boston Center for the Arts.