My current body of work explores the lived experience of women navigating and existing in systems designed to reduce them to fit and adapt to the shifting landscape of what men want them to be.

In this series, shoes – my shoes – become the visual vehicle to access the experience of women. The women exist only as negative space, present through their absence, while the hands of men,
scales and traps make the mechanisms of control brutally visible. These sculptures cut into the mandate from society about woman’s responsibility to be beautiful, talented, generous all while
pretending arbitrary standards are natural law.

The throughline of these sculptures is erasure, how these standards obliterate the actual, fully embodied human being forced to meet them. I want viewers to confront the experience of the woman forced to wear the shoes.

I am a sculptor working across the spectrum of figuration and abstraction and driven by the belief that art can reflect our experiences back to us in ways that allow us to see them differently. My practice explores how materials, forms and cultural contexts shape both what we create and how viewers encounter, interact with and become part of the art by essentially completing the experience themselves. It adds additional layers to the art and invites the observer to be in the conversation.

What I find particularly interesting is the relationship between positive and negative spaces. The empty areas can be as powerful as the solid mass; they create space for the viewer’s brain to get involved, to finish what I have started. This interplay is essential to my work whether I am rendering the brutality of the patriarchy or celebrating the love and beauty of nature.

These sculptures represent different sides of me, as humans have many layers. The feminist shoe series confronts systems of control and violence through materials and form while my bronze work
celebrates beauty, both in nature and in abstraction itself. My abstract pieces explore how different media and elements create different experiences for the observer; abstraction becomes a tool for
expressing something essential about a subject or feeling that figuration alone cannot reach.

I am captivated by the interplay between materials, forms and cultural contexts. Living in the heartland, I have observed how individuals respond differently to various mediums and styles. A piece in bronze lands differently that one in stone and how abstraction invites participation while figuration lends itself to observation. This dynamic dialogue between form, material and observer
fuels my artistic curiosity, inspiring me to challenge and engage those who encounter my work.

Art has the power to make us see ourselves, our world and our connections differently. That transformation is what I am after in my work.