The Road to Making Giant Installations
As a multi-disciplinary artist, my work takes many different shapes and sizes. When people ask me about what kinds of work I make, I try to speak to the breadth of my work and interests without being too vague. It’s most easily conveyed by the fact that while 8.5”x 11” drawings are my mainstay, I deviate in working super small--detailed, hand-embroidered patches--and super large--paper-based installations that can engage multiple full-grown humans at a time. A question that often follows is “wow, how do you do work like that?” Sometimes it’s difficult to articulate how I work in the ways as I get to, especially in regards to installations, but context makes everything make more sense. This is a little background on the personal road that leads me to why I make what I do.
Detail of Continuance (Physical Environmental Immersion #1), my Undergraduate Thesis project at Ohio University, 2016
Most of my childhood was spent being a home-schooler. Until seventh grade, I would plug away at my day’s studies in the morning, complete everything in two to three hours, then spend the rest of my day reading, drawing, and sculpting. I loved A Series of Unfortunate Events, learning about late 20th-century popular culture, my dogs, Muppets, vintage craft books, and old-school cartoons. These influences inspired me to spend hours and hours crafting my own felt characters, dioramas, drawings, paper dolls, comic books, stories, and plenty of other things that echoed whatever captured my interest.
Of all the things I made, I spent most of my time making small worlds out of cardboard and craft supplies. All of them were domestic spaces outfitted with furniture, decor, and accoutrements. These worlds also had a huge supply of fresh produce and snack foods, exactingly sculpted with oven-baked clay, none of them larger than a half inch in size. Looking back, these spaces represented autonomy, safety, and stability, ready whenever I needed to get into my teeny tiny worlds. Making them out of recyclables and craft supplies from my mother was convenient, but also scratched at the powerful feeling I’ve always found in creativity: I can imagine things and I can make them real, out of whatever I have on hand, and I always have access to that.
Installation view of SPARKLEMOJI, my solo show at The Blue House Gallery, 2017
That realization is significant to my healing journey, and has helped me transform the ways I work. I make things with the intention to explore feelings and circumstances and memories, often becoming more aware of them through my making. I create to work through my trauma, and to try not to pass or project that hurt onto others. I find power in work that can easily slide into the contours of someone’s life, as well as work that immerses us all into some other space or experience. We are collectively designing the world every day, and creativities are some of the most visionary and obvious ways we engage in crafting our realities.
As a child, I needed portals to slip into for survival. As an adult, I create to understand our interconnectedness, to walk on a path where there is abundant space, healing, and learning for all of us. My installations are large, physical portals that stem from my own time, labor, and reckonings, and it is my hope that they can be experienced far beyond the context of who made them and how. All of us are impacted by each other, and creating is a gift that we all engage with through one means or another. My installations are born from all of that, and I am excited to see all of the future worlds we craft, in our ways, together.
Detail of Cosmic Flora, an installation part of Let It Grow, a plant-themed show also featuring work by CHIAOZZA and Danielle Julian-Norton, Wave Pool Gallery, 2018
