Storytelling is my way of making sense of the world.
I create multi-media art and digital environments that embody my interests in underrepresented folklore and oral history, visualizing the written word, and storytelling through an environment. I create written and visual art but each medium has its own priorities. In my writing, I tell stories through characters. In my visual art, I prefer telling stories through the environment.
I’ve always had a fascination with allowing the audience to explore and come to their own conclusion from noticed details. There’s so much freedom in environmental design and much of my work over my artist career shows this belief. I care about the story over aesthetics and I believe aesthetics should support the story.
That does not mean I think that something can look like trash if it tells a good story, just that the art should support, not detract or distract from the message. From a storytelling perspective, I enjoy ghost stories and horror although I am not interested in the visceral or gore.
I like stories that give depth to the monster or searches for humanity within the inhumane.
Most of my visual art tends to have darker tones and visual tension with a flicker of life or representative lightheartedness slipped in as a detail or sometimes as the focus in the midst of darkness or greyness. Stories are my way of applying context to ideas of humanity and my place in the world and the work I do reflects this.