I seek to transform our society’s values and behaviors by examining the material characteristics of man-made objects and the physical condition of the human body. My work presumes a body-mind-environment connection, defining existence as not merely physical presence but also through every relationship that we enter into and every action we undertake. My body is not only that part of my being that rests within the borders of my skin; it is the sum total of my interactions with the outside world. My sculptures and installations explore the consequences of changes in embodied experience using dark humor, metaphors and three-dimensional collages.

I react to global processes of production and consumption (including new communication technologies, forms of entertainment, food productions strategies, and medical enhancements) that not only affect the environment, but also change human nature. Today, virtual technologies transform our relationships to both time and place by displacing sensory and emotional experiences from the site of the human body. Aesthetic surgery, image editing software, and ready anonymous audiences make every life a potential spectacle based on outward appearances. Cheap transportation, air conditioning, and factory farms enable us to “control” Mother Nature. My art represents the choices, tensions, and conflicts that our bodies face when we harness technical changes to dominate the environment through the global marketplace.

Irrespective of the perceived qualities of the material I use, my creative process resembles a personal dialogue with objects ranging from precious metals to lowly fast food containers. I juxtapose cast and modeled body parts and indications of a human presence with found objects and mass-produced forms. By combining a pair of feet on tiptoe with industrially produced goods, I depict a physically straining moment and evoke a larger untenable social attitude towards finite natural resources. Elsewhere, I mimic mass production with a series of sculptures that form an endless interlocking chain of rounded juice boxes fitted with pairs of human lips. The piece represents the dehumanizing effects of industrial manufacturing processes.

My sculptures and installations critique cultures that define individuals by how much they make rather than by what they do. Value systems that promote ownership, accumulation, and over consumption, without encouraging us to evaluate what we need and why, create false notions of both choice and security. Isolation and the conformity increase when identity is built on product identification and people judge others on the basis of visual cues to status. Individualism promotes short-term thinking and unsustainable social practices. Disposable food grown by disposable workers is sold in interchangeable supermarkets in disposable packaging materials. Consumers proudly broadcast which brands they buy. Alienation is medicated and managed. My work seeks to disrupt complacent attitudes towards the process of production by questioning our underlying values and exposing their potentially toxic effect son human bodies.

I do not aim to inspire nostalgia for a long lost connection to nature. Instead, I suggest that we can create a more sustainable relationship with the environment. By ironically representing the body as a static, commercial object, I lead viewers to desire the opposite: a physical lived experience consisting of a dynamic, constantly changing, set of relationships.

My work aims to inspire others to see and value existence as action and being as becoming. By portraying the body in unexpected situations or modifying it with the addition of objects that are neither sensual nor organic, I create hybrid forms that ask the viewer to consider his or her personal relationship to physical embodiment and experience