2014

Love is a powerful word. It is also loaded and tied to strong emotions. Luv is a modern take on the word love. It is pronounced the same but it holds different connotations. It is used in a more casual and loose manner than the word love. A contributor to urban dictionary defines luv as “a casual way of saying you really like someone without freaking them out by saying I love you. Commonly used by people early on in relationships, where it is too soon to say I love you.”

“Love v. Luv” is a study on how different people say these words. When I record, I ask the person to think of the feeling of each word as they speak them. The frequency and volume with which different people say the words changes the peaks and valleys of the form. A pattern emerges, but every love & luv is different. This is a very rational approach to understanding an emotionally charged subject matter.

There is a lot to be observed in the ways people differentiate these words. I try not to ascribe too much meaning to the way the word has been spoken, but I do make notes and observations about the person’s form of “love” and “luv” based on my knowing them and other circumstances surrounding my relationship to them.

I am interested in the multiple transformations that take place through this process. The word goes from written form to spoken sound which is translated into a string of data that is used to create a form and then that is milled from a yoga block. The block is used in yoga to support the body in uncomfortable positions to let it relax more into a pose. Language is supported by the body, and here I have create a mutual relationship in which the body can be supported by language.

In this installation of “love vs luv” I installed the words which have been carved by a CNC router with a pile of what remains from love and luv along with an instruction for a heart exercise.

2014

In this performance, each time a new tweet with the word “painful” is received, an electronic candle automatically lights up (for 2 seconds) for that tweet. The idea that there is an undiscriminating machine praying for all pains, big or small, physical or emotional is of interest to me here. It is no more a choice on the part of the person tweeting to be prayed for as it is for the altar to be lighting offerings for those peoples’ pains.
As I meditate on the painful tweets that are coming in, I make an offering by touching my forehead (or third eye) to an i-pad, which triggers a new 3-d model of a vessel. Mateo Marquez participated by writing the code for this trigger and using a video mixer to create visual feedback. I composed the sound using recordings of my voice and cell phone tones. The volume increases with each tap of my third eye to the I-pad.

Chromacure is an ap that administers color therapy depending on the condition or ailment you select. It is based on research I did on color therapy. Each color sequence cycles through a few different colors, beginning and ending with white. While You Wait (chromacure) is an installation that resembles a doctors office waiting room. An audio instructional plays in the room on loop of how to use the ap while you “wait”. In hospitals and doctors offices, waiting times are obscene. The question of waiting for healing is of importance here, and in this situation, the viewer waits on a doctor who will never actually materialize, and receives treatment that may or may not be suitable for his or her needs.

2015

This work analyzes societies’ closeness to devices - and their ability to heal or curb loneliness, pain, stress, anxiety, ect. while also assessing the increasing feeling of  loss of self in an advanced technological society (hence the surge of “self-help” and therapy industries with their quest for wholeness and centeredness). What effects (positive or negative) will devices have on the human body and psyche? We are now able to know the physical self in ways which were once very hard to imagine. We can track our heart rate, steps we take, hours of sleep, ect. all through a bracelet that communicates with an ap on our phone. While we are becoming closer to knowing certain aspects of the human body better, there is an increasing separation between body and self. 

"Love Bed" is created out of the vocal waves of 60 people saying love. I create a topography out of language on which the body is able to absorb the meaning through touch rather than sound or site. In this resort, Bed=Island, all kinds of love is available through the most simple interactions - lying, sitting, standing, breathing. It is a product that can be misted on and absorbed through the skin as rosewater in an atomizer. On one hand, I naively hope and sort of believe that this is possible, and on the other I am commenting on the simplification of intimacy in our digital age, and healing in the new age. 

These works engage with my relationship with troubled earth histories of which I am a part. I embed narratives of the present into Earth's funerary rites as I imagine a future of rebirth or rediscovery. 

2017

Public commission based on local plant ecology. 

2014

Public intervention in the Baltimore Landscape meant to draw the observant passerby's eye down to connect with and become inspired by nature and the growth that can take place despite oppresive conditions and in the most unsuspecting circumstances. These little plants spoke to me, and told me to press on, so I wanted to recreate that experience for others. 

2015
Maps of the landscape of my bed after two amorous bodies left their marks.  

Colere

VisArts Center Rockville, MD April 27 - May 27 2018

This body of work investigates how man extracts value from the land. I created carved maps of landscapes with precious resources and painful pasts. Blemishes and flaws are revealed in the grains beneath the surface of the ply as the terrains are traced using computer numeric control. I imagine a future where there is nothing left to mine and where these relics with embedded cryptocurrency mining computers are all that we have left.

Some of the works’ formal references are drawn from religious funerary rites and American quilts. They explore aesthetics of various power structures and reflect on histories of colonization of lands caught in the crossfire of humans’ thirst for power and material possession. Using dyes made from soils collected from these sites, I constructed quilts as both a reference for land plots and lotteries and connotations of gridded games that emphasize acquisition.

An added layer to the exhibit is that some works can be scanned with the viewers' phones to reveal digital relics composed of images and 3d scanned stones from my visits and interviews. Upon entering the AR website, power is taken from the viewer's device and is used to mine cryptocurrency. This dynamic relationship of authority, permission, and control relates back the subject of coloniazation and the mistreatment of people and lands alike.