My art practice examines, recontextualizes, and deconstructs the systems of visual culture that engineer consumer desire. As the 20th Century saw the shift from economies based on need to economies based on desire, advertising – along with marketing, branding, and schemes like planned obsolescence – became the essential engines that drive that desire. I am critical of the desire-based economy in that it has led to excesses in production, pollution, consumption, and spending that have damaged the planet; established a reliance on high levels of consumer debt; and contributed to the wealth disparity we are seeing in the 21st Century. I am also concerned with the psychological effects this type of propaganda has on our collective psyche and its insidious way of co-opting the self.
As a result of this focus, much of my work addresses broader issues of communication and notions of physical and psychological presence. I am interested in the ways in which we communicate as a culture - particularly in terms of text, image, objects and graphics presented in public and semi-public space. I seek to understand the effects these elements of our landscape have on our shared space and the differences between two-dimensional, literary, and three-dimensional presence. I have concerns about the corporate presence in public space and the questions it raises about access and the notion of what is “public.”
My subject matter has expanded in recent years due to my two years of residency in Chicago Public Schools. I approach the educational systems in a similar manner as I do consumerism. Both are large, societal systems that have immeasurable influence over the lives of their subjects. In CPS, I focus on the physical objects that support public education unceremoniously. The arrangements of these objects as precarious assemblage sculptures are intended as a metaphor for education itself.