PROJECTS
METAL SPINNING TRAINING - MUNCIE METAL SPINNING COMPANY
July 2020 - January 2021
With the support of a grant from Ball State University's Aspire program, I have been training with Muncie Metal Spinning Company to learn the process of metal spinning as a way to incorporate this process into my own studio process, as well as incorporate it into my teaching curriculum. Metal spinning is an industrial process by which a disc a metal is rotated at high speed and formed against a steel or wooden tool and is radially symmetrical.
July 2020 - January 2021
With the support of a grant from Ball State University's Aspire program, I have been training with Muncie Metal Spinning Company to learn the process of metal spinning as a way to incorporate this process into my own studio process, as well as incorporate it into my teaching curriculum. Metal spinning is an industrial process by which a disc a metal is rotated at high speed and formed against a steel or wooden tool and is radially symmetrical.
FICTITIOUS FLORA - RACINE ART MUSEUM
August 2016 - July 2017
Working within a palette of pastels, pinks and baby blues, this work questions our culture’s need to codify objects according to gender. The large enamel panels are graphic renderings of handguns in a radial design. Referencing a floral arrangement or mandala, it plays with the viewer’s interpretation by recalling something that is both a symbol of aggression and something that is ornamental and beautiful. The flower and handgun became a motif used throughout the installation.
Installed for one calendar year, with a change to the installation at the mid-point, this work is an extension of a larger body of work, that has encompassed sculptures, jewelry, and wall work. The series combines flower/botanical forms with fragments of the human body in order to address the narrative of human life cycles: growth, metamorphosis, aging, death. These human/plant hybrids are large, voluptuous, headless, and armless. The flower forms become a negation, a censoring or denial of what lies beneath. These anthropomorphic beings are at once, powerful and powerless, beautiful and absurd, inflated, and amputated.
August 2016 - July 2017
Working within a palette of pastels, pinks and baby blues, this work questions our culture’s need to codify objects according to gender. The large enamel panels are graphic renderings of handguns in a radial design. Referencing a floral arrangement or mandala, it plays with the viewer’s interpretation by recalling something that is both a symbol of aggression and something that is ornamental and beautiful. The flower and handgun became a motif used throughout the installation.
Installed for one calendar year, with a change to the installation at the mid-point, this work is an extension of a larger body of work, that has encompassed sculptures, jewelry, and wall work. The series combines flower/botanical forms with fragments of the human body in order to address the narrative of human life cycles: growth, metamorphosis, aging, death. These human/plant hybrids are large, voluptuous, headless, and armless. The flower forms become a negation, a censoring or denial of what lies beneath. These anthropomorphic beings are at once, powerful and powerless, beautiful and absurd, inflated, and amputated.
KOHLER ARTS / INDUSTRY RESIDENCY
August - September, 2014
I was awarded a residency through the John Michael Kohler Arts Center to work for two-months in order to learn the process of slip-casting porcelain and mold-making. This time, working alongside the factory technicians and residency support staff, was an important step towards understanding a new material as a counterpoint to metalsmithing and enameling.
