2026
oriented strand board, concrete, sticks, plaster, brass, bioplastic made of glycerine and agar, marigold dye, marigold petals, insect exoskeletons
There is a flow between our bodies and the materials that surround us. When we make things, we’re shaping the material world, and those things that we make also start to shape us. I think of this relationship in terms of human labor, and search for it everywhere. Using construction materials, art materials, and invented substances, I explore the ways that we embed our ideas, our politics, and our emotions into the material world.
In this work, I am specifically interested in oriented strand board, the ubiquitous construction material used primarily for sheathing houses. OSB is made from logs too small or damaged to make into lumber; instead, they are collected from logging areas, shipped to processing facilities, chipped down, pressed into boards, and redistributed out to big box stores. Each “strand” of wood in OSB comes from a specific tree in a specific place, but as it travels through the supply chain, it loses its specificity and becomes symbolically placeless. OSB becomes symbolically labor-less as well, as its industrial production obscures the people required to produce it. I am interested in the political implications of this obscuring of place and labor: whose labor is visible and what materials are privileged in contemporary society, and why? By engaging artistically with industrial materials, I attempt to conceptually draw out the labor implicit in their production.
2026
oriented strand board, concrete, sticks, plaster, brass, bioplastic made of glycerine and agar, marigold dye, marigold petals, insect exoskeletons
There is a flow between our bodies and the materials that surround us. When we make things, we’re shaping the material world, and those things that we make also start to shape us. I think of this relationship in terms of human labor, and search for it everywhere. Using construction materials, art materials, and invented substances, I explore the ways that we embed our ideas, our politics, and our emotions into the material world.
In this work, I am specifically interested in oriented strand board, the ubiquitous construction material used primarily for sheathing houses. OSB is made from logs too small or damaged to make into lumber; instead, they are collected from logging areas, shipped to processing facilities, chipped down, pressed into boards, and redistributed out to big box stores. Each “strand” of wood in OSB comes from a specific tree in a specific place, but as it travels through the supply chain, it loses its specificity and becomes symbolically placeless. OSB becomes symbolically labor-less as well, as its industrial production obscures the people required to produce it. I am interested in the political implications of this obscuring of place and labor: whose labor is visible and what materials are privileged in contemporary society, and why? By engaging artistically with industrial materials, I attempt to conceptually draw out the labor implicit in their production.
2026
oriented strand board, concrete, sticks, plaster, brass, bioplastic made of glycerine and agar, marigold dye, marigold petals, insect exoskeletons
There is a flow between our bodies and the materials that surround us. When we make things, we’re shaping the material world, and those things that we make also start to shape us. I think of this relationship in terms of human labor, and search for it everywhere. Using construction materials, art materials, and invented substances, I explore the ways that we embed our ideas, our politics, and our emotions into the material world.
In this work, I am specifically interested in oriented strand board, the ubiquitous construction material used primarily for sheathing houses. OSB is made from logs too small or damaged to make into lumber; instead, they are collected from logging areas, shipped to processing facilities, chipped down, pressed into boards, and redistributed out to big box stores. Each “strand” of wood in OSB comes from a specific tree in a specific place, but as it travels through the supply chain, it loses its specificity and becomes symbolically placeless. OSB becomes symbolically labor-less as well, as its industrial production obscures the people required to produce it. I am interested in the political implications of this obscuring of place and labor: whose labor is visible and what materials are privileged in contemporary society, and why? By engaging artistically with industrial materials, I attempt to conceptually draw out the labor implicit in their production.
2026
oriented strand board, concrete, sticks, plaster, brass, bioplastic made of glycerine and agar, marigold dye, marigold petals, insect exoskeletons
There is a flow between our bodies and the materials that surround us. When we make things, we’re shaping the material world, and those things that we make also start to shape us. I think of this relationship in terms of human labor, and search for it everywhere. Using construction materials, art materials, and invented substances, I explore the ways that we embed our ideas, our politics, and our emotions into the material world.
In this work, I am specifically interested in oriented strand board, the ubiquitous construction material used primarily for sheathing houses. OSB is made from logs too small or damaged to make into lumber; instead, they are collected from logging areas, shipped to processing facilities, chipped down, pressed into boards, and redistributed out to big box stores. Each “strand” of wood in OSB comes from a specific tree in a specific place, but as it travels through the supply chain, it loses its specificity and becomes symbolically placeless. OSB becomes symbolically labor-less as well, as its industrial production obscures the people required to produce it. I am interested in the political implications of this obscuring of place and labor: whose labor is visible and what materials are privileged in contemporary society, and why? By engaging artistically with industrial materials, I attempt to conceptually draw out the labor implicit in their production.
2026
oriented strand board, concrete, sticks, plaster, brass, bioplastic made of glycerine and agar, marigold dye, marigold petals, insect exoskeletons
There is a flow between our bodies and the materials that surround us. When we make things, we’re shaping the material world, and those things that we make also start to shape us. I think of this relationship in terms of human labor, and search for it everywhere. Using construction materials, art materials, and invented substances, I explore the ways that we embed our ideas, our politics, and our emotions into the material world.
In this work, I am specifically interested in oriented strand board, the ubiquitous construction material used primarily for sheathing houses. OSB is made from logs too small or damaged to make into lumber; instead, they are collected from logging areas, shipped to processing facilities, chipped down, pressed into boards, and redistributed out to big box stores. Each “strand” of wood in OSB comes from a specific tree in a specific place, but as it travels through the supply chain, it loses its specificity and becomes symbolically placeless. OSB becomes symbolically labor-less as well, as its industrial production obscures the people required to produce it. I am interested in the political implications of this obscuring of place and labor: whose labor is visible and what materials are privileged in contemporary society, and why? By engaging artistically with industrial materials, I attempt to conceptually draw out the labor implicit in their production.
2025
Tarp, pine
The color blue compels us to ask. It is the color of the sky (what is up there?) and the color of the ocean (what is down there?). It rarely occurs in this petroleum-bright hue in nature. A blue tarp demands to be remembered, picked out of the browns and greens of the world, a paradox to its ubiquity. They are are cheap and temporary and are often used in makeshift structures. Tarps are materials of transience despite their eternal petroleum desires. The materials that will be around us and in us forever are the ones we value least, and through them we seek an immortality we never asked.
Into the flat tarp is cut an abstracted flowing net. Nets and tarps are ways of holding, containing, and protecting: intermediaries between one thing and another. Boundary; a promise of another side. To cut through; to see the other side. A blue reflection of things hidden and caught, seen and unseen, permanent and transient.
2025
Tarp, pine
The color blue compels us to ask. It is the color of the sky (what is up there?) and the color of the ocean (what is down there?). It rarely occurs in this petroleum-bright hue in nature. A blue tarp demands to be remembered, picked out of the browns and greens of the world, a paradox to its ubiquity. They are are cheap and temporary and are often used in makeshift structures. Tarps are materials of transience despite their eternal petroleum desires. The materials that will be around us and in us forever are the ones we value least, and through them we seek an immortality we never asked.
Into the flat tarp is cut an abstracted flowing net. Nets and tarps are ways of holding, containing, and protecting: intermediaries between one thing and another. Boundary; a promise of another side. To cut through; to see the other side. A blue reflection of things hidden and caught, seen and unseen, permanent and transient.
2025 Clay, wool yarn, fishing line, paper, graphite, construction line, foam core, oriented strand board, map of Evansville
Dimensions variable
I engage with materials in order to understand first what is there, and second what is possible. Moving from a desire to know what is real, I allow materials to reveal themselves to me. Conceptual, theoretical, and political frameworks become tools for a greater depth of understanding and guides for further material engagement.
ie: a net is a way of holding and catching; a flowing thing in the form of a grid, a thing you use on a boat, which must navigate without markers through maps and stars. How do we know where we are and where we are going?
ie: orange is a color used to set a thing apart from the world, from the brown of trees in winter, from the grey of concrete; it distinguishes, calls attention to, and keeps safe through hyper-visibility. What does it mean to find safety in being seen?
ie: a grid is a structure and a representation of a structure, a tendency towards order, a way of holding, of collecting, of organizing. A grid is architecture, system, institution. The perfection of a grid is the thing striven towards but never attained; so what is actually there, in the ruptures, bends, folds, and flows?
2025. Plaster, grout, fabric, pastel. 36”x24”x8”.
This piece is an exploration of form, color, and material. Fabric squares are pigmented and pressed with fingers into wet grout, arresting a flowing material into something concrete. The resulting grid evokes both quilting and tiling. The form seems to encapsulate something. A range of orange shades are a reflection of the world: construction sites, fall leaves, fluorescent plastic, red dirt, sunlight.
2025. Plaster, grout, fabric, pastel. 36”x24”x8”.
This piece is an exploration of form, color, and material. Fabric squares are pigmented and pressed with fingers into wet grout, arresting a flowing material into something concrete. The resulting grid evokes both quilting and tiling. The form seems to encapsulate something. A range of orange shades are a reflection of the world: construction sites, fall leaves, fluorescent plastic, red dirt, sunlight.
2025. OSB, speaker with recording from under the I69 overpass. 9x9x9”
This box made of oriented strand board (OSB) is a direct reference to Robert Morris’ 1961 piece of the same title. Where Morris’ piece considered process as an integral part of an art work, playing the sounds of the saws and woodworking equipment that Morris used to make it from within, mine considers the invisiblized supply chain forces that make artistic production possible. OSB is a ubiquitous, cheap construction material made of low quality logs. They are chipped down and reconstructed into placeless amalgamations without a traceable single provenance. The interstate system is a key part of the supply chain and was developed after WWII for defense and economic purposes. An internal speaker plays a recording of the sounds under an interstate overpass. If taken as a direct reference to Morris’ piece, the sounds of cars, 18 wheelers, and crickets are implied to be the sound of the making of the OSB box.
2025. OSB, speaker with recording from under the I69 overpass. 9x9x9”
This box made of oriented strand board (OSB) is a direct reference to Robert Morris’ 1961 piece of the same title. Where Morris’ piece considered process as an integral part of an art work, playing the sounds of the saws and woodworking equipment that Morris used to make it from within, mine considers the invisiblized supply chain forces that make artistic production possible. OSB is a ubiquitous, cheap construction material made of low quality logs. They are chipped down and reconstructed into placeless amalgamations without a traceable single provenance. The interstate system is a key part of the supply chain and was developed after WWII for defense and economic purposes. An internal speaker plays a recording of the sounds under an interstate overpass. If taken as a direct reference to Morris’ piece, the sounds of cars, 18 wheelers, and crickets are implied to be the sound of the making of the OSB box.
