My art is based on the confluence of natural materials and found relics. Materiality is critical to my work and often the starting place for inspiration; newspaper clippings from letter exchanges with my grandmother, cheesecloth reminiscent of the curdling milk hanging from my mother’s bathroom sinks, snips of hair from poorly planned haircutting experiments. These become the foundation for intimately curated microcosms.
From an early age, I spent a great deal of time in nature. Growing up in Rural Russia and then upstate New York, I was always rescuing creatures; birds with broken wings, squirrels that needed weaning, and bugs of every shape and size. Summers were punctuated with time outside, collecting plants and pods. These shapes instill nostalgia in me like old photographs do for others. By capturing these objects and transforming them through drawing or painting, they are given an opportunity to live on in a different form. Artist Ana Mendieta once said of her work: My art is grounded in the belief of one universal energy which runs through everything: from insect to man, from man to spectre, from spectre to plant from plant to galaxy… Similarly, the process of returning to an original state, the cycle of life, which connects us all, is of great inspiration to me.
Working within drawing, painting, and sculpture I choose what medium feels most appropriate for any given project, often times combining multiple. I rarely set out with a concrete plan, and am interested in the places in my art that evolve through the process of working; where elements crack, drip, ooze, expose. The sense of interior and exterior is often present, both in the physical sense of elements that can be explored and illustrations of interiors such as the underlying biomechanics in living beings.
I strive for a type of viewing experience that provides more than a unilateral exchange. By challenging the notion of size, by blurring the lines of what is real and what is drawn, I ask the viewer to be a participant in my world.
