statement

I envision the female body as a site where the paradox of object and authority is performed. In the painting 'Body Fountain' I memorialize contemporary female performance artist Anya Liftig, who appropriates this paradox with particular strength. The Baroque is revisited as the art historical era that enfolds the past and future into their most climatic in-between state, and as the painting approach which most aptly poses Gilles Deleuze's concept of 'becoming-other.'

In my series of finely rendered ballpoint pen drawings, I use the act of sheep shearing as an opportunity to visualize my themes separately from the human form and its precise cultural implications, opening the sensations of experience up as a subject of their own. As weirdly sensual images, the vacant matter-of-factness of sheep would seem to reiterate objectification, but the inexplicable heroism with which they are drawn indicates the authoritative dimension as well. It is by making the sheep's experience maximally intense that I infuse them with agency, since physical reaction is the affective root of subjectivity. In a purely formal sense, not only do these images dislocate the topical constraints of a 'female' body, but the visual qualities of wool liquidate altogether what it means to have a body in the first place. Once again, my interest in becoming-something-other is iterated as a sensation that floats through and between bodies, known only as a sensation but vivid nonetheless.

bio

born: 1983, Macon, Georgia

education

Savannah College of Art and Design, 2005

selected awards/honors

Triangle Arts Association Workshop Participant, 2012

Dutch Postgraduate School for Art History, Research Fellowship, 2012

Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, 2010

Savannah College of Art & Design, Studio Space Award, 2005

selected publications

Studio Visit Magazine, Volume 23. Boston, MA: The Open Studios Press p. 168-169, 2013.

Working It Out, Exhibition Catalog. New York, NY: The Painting Center, 2013

Xhibit, Exhibition Catalog. Mesilla, NM: Preston Contemporary Art Center, 2011.

New American Paintings, Issue 86. Boston, MA: The Open Studios Press p. 133-135, 2010.

selected group shows

Pop-Up Exhibition, First Street Gallery, New York, New York, forthcoming 2014

National Juried Exhibition, Juried by Donald Kuspit, First Street Gallery, New York, New York, 2013

Working It Out, The Painting Center, New York, New York, 2013

Members Only, Superchief Gallery at Culturefix, New York, New York, 2013