American folk art vocabularies established over the past three centuries by people living in small, isolated communities are oddly well-suited to a contemporary context of solitary individuals living in even greater isolation.

​

My sculptural forms consist of wood, clay, paper, plastic, rubber, wire, and string, that I whittle, form, assemble, paint, fold, bend, wind, and tie, combining carving with hardware and dollar store materials to twist measures of ironic relief in bewildering times. In the forms of analog playthings, I envision artifacts of a past within reach of memory – action figures, puppets, dress-up masks, dolls, toy soldiers – drawing parallels to effigy figures to summon viewers’ reactions. Accessible scale and cartoonish handling belie quietly confrontational totems of more linear times, whether taken as hearkenings or memento mori.

​

These pieces were prompted by the Musée du quai Branly touring exhibition, The Plains Indians, and subsequent visits to the collection of Native American art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, raising questions about the parallel natures of artifact and art. Later visits to the Kohler Art Preserve’s collection of self-taught artists’ compulsive, introspective work, combined with Grayson Perry’s three Reith Lectures, focused these questions into two – What is art? Does intent matter? – that I continue to explore in my work.