I create large-scale wooden sculptures as a means to question my place within the world. I began this practice after moving through forests and other natural spaces, noticing the small details of these environments and considering my own existence within ecosystems larger than mine. Within my sculptural practice, I manipulate wood found in its large, raw state, into positions and bends that challenge conventional form; I also test physical and metaphorical extremes such as tension, compression, and resistance. I take time with each piece, highlighting moments where the wood seems to bring forth its own story, integrating it with my own. The processes of forming and reforming, subtracting and shaping, transform the material toward personal associations, both bodily and emotional.
Natural materials have always fascinated me. Each piece has its own unique story, history, scar, and beauty. When I pick up a piece of wood or stone, I consider it not as inert, but as a fellow body, someone full of life, past present and future. I select off-cuts from firewood piles or trees felled by rot and storms, looking for pieces with stories of their own. I allow the wood to exist in its own skin, embracing cracks, natural rot forming in a tree trunk, grain patterns in green wood, pinholes left by insects, among other ecological processes, as part of the sculptural practice. In this way, the ecosystems inherent to the material, along with their ecological histories, are given form. These forms often suggest the body: sometimes my own, sometimes another, queer body, slipping in and out of identification. These pieces serve as a bridge to understanding both nature and ourselves.