Installations 2009–2017
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I read The Little Prince in my twenties. I don't remember exactly when or where, which feels fitting for a book that has a way of arriving at precisely the right moment and then refusing to leave. What I remember is the feeling it left behind: something between wonder and grief. The little prince tends his rose. He sweeps out his volcanoes. He pulls up the baobab seedlings before they split the planet apart. He does all of this with tremendous care and tremendous misunderstanding, and in the end it doesn't save him. It doesn't save the rose either, not really. The care was real. The outcome was not what anyone hoped for.
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That tension has never left me. The little prince is not a villain. He loves his rose. He just doesn't fully understand what love requires, and neither, Saint-Exupery seems to be saying, do we. We are all tending something we can't quite see clearly. We are all pulling up baobabs with varying degrees of success.
It started, for me, with a wasp. I was sewing together a piece of egg-crate foam I had transported two hours from my parents' garage, intending to make a landscape, when I discovered a wasp had been living inside it. I clamped the seam shut and sewed furiously. I felt bad. But I also didn't want to get stung. What resulted was a sealed foam form that had become simultaneously a home and a tomb: Landscape for a Wasp. That piece taught me something I have been working out ever since. The act of making, of tending, of preserving, of containing, is always also an act of control. You can mean well and still trap something.
These installations are where that understanding began.
Landscape for a Wasp, 2015
Ceramics Installation Room, University of Houston
MFA Thesis Show, 2016
This two-part site-specific installation was the culmination of the inquiry that began with the wasp. The interior work suspends sealed foam forms in space — orbiting bodies, planets, landscapes held together by fishing line and intent.
The exterior rock garden places cast dental molds and packing plastic among stones and plants, the body's traces returned to the environment. Together they ask what it means to tend a place, and what you leave behind when you go.
The exterior rock garden places cast dental molds and packing plastic among stones and plants, the body's traces returned to the environment. Together they ask what it means to tend a place, and what you leave behind when you go.
Materials: found foam, fishing line, overhead projectors, and herb and food powders in resin. Location: Blaffer Museum, University of Houston
Blaffer Rock Garden 2016
Materials: dental casts, packing plastic, steel. Location: Blaffer Rock Gardan, University of Houston
Silos on Sawyer SITE Houston Installation
NOV. 6, 2015 - JAN. 30, 2016
In Silo D-6, I explore the link between people and places with materials I’ve picked up within a five-mile radius of the SITE exhibition. I cast each object’s shadow onto the walls of the silo and trace their outline and form in various mediums, such as chalk, acrylics and spray paint. This results in a landscape, mural-like installation that reflects both the space and its connection to the people who inhabit this area of Houston When a landscape is altered, the act creates a feedback loop between humanity’s alteration of landscape and the landscape’s alteration of infrastructure. With this work, I am building a world that reflects the ongoing battle between the landscape and its decaying infrastructure.
For a virtual tour of the space click here.
For a virtual tour of the space click here.
Beyond Form Room Install, The Center, Dallas, 2017
Room 134 Shadow Landscape Vol 3: Dallas, 2017, objects I found on the streets of Dallas, projected and painted shadows.
Beyond Form Stairwell, The Center, Dallas, 2017
Stairs: We are better than this, 2017, paper
