Being a woman has so many complexities to navigate and I am exploring the ways in which there is great strength and beauty, but also great anxiety and fear. I find significance in how the organic forms relate to my own femininity and ideals of beauty, and when the relationship with those ideals becomes toxic and parasitic. I make work that explores the blurring of that line. When I am overwhelmed or suffocated by anxieties specifically tied to feelings of doubt: not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not talented enough. Not enough. But then within that fragility of the female psyche, within my own, there is also great strength and true beauty. Despite hardships there can be a new beginning, new growth, new life. The floral-esque growths represent both of those ideas, pushing against each, and coexisting in that space.

 

The series Pleurotus, is specifically an investigation of my love and fascination with decoration in our culture, and the line between beauty, excess, and consumption. Within this work I also contemplate ideas about what beauty is, how it is defined, and why it is important.

 

I utilize ceramic and furniture pieces, in Pleurotus Supellex, to explore ideas of excess and overgrowth within the spaces we occupy, moving through time. The ceramic component of this work, the growths, are seemingly benign and passive life forms that are slowly overgrowing, enveloping, and taking over the space.  While the furniture is the object being suffocated in different stages of overgrowth. It is a direct reflection of the pressures of the expectations the world has and the expectations we place on ourselves, and all the while there is something new emerging

I have since expanded upon that idea in Pleurotus Vestitus, I combine ceramic forms with apparel and dress forms, to specifically relate to the body and what happens when we apply these ideas of beauty to them. I am specifically interested in where the quest for beauty becomes harmful, and the decorative shell consumes oneself. When one becomes just a decoration, is it still truly beautiful?