BOMBS: This series consists of sculptures of mushroom clouds displayed on pedestals that seem badly constructed or awkwardly painted. As the title indicates, these works conflate the guiltiness of having made a flawed or failed sculpture with the guilt of having made an atomic bomb: an absurd (but psychologically revealing) comparison. The sculptures utilize and undermine the traditional presentation of figure-on-pedestal that is associated with heroic, monumental sculpture, to instead create a monument to failure. LETTERS: When I was seven, my mom, stepfather, brother, and I moved to a log cabin in rural Idaho. We were extremely isolated there, and there was no way for my dad, who lived in Los Angeles, to contact us except via the mail. I recently found some drafts of the letters that he wrote, and immediately I knew that I wanted to make drawings of them. But as soon as I began to draw them, I realized that I also wanted to write back, to respond to the person that he was then from the person that I am now. The two sets of letters directly embody the things I think about and try to work out by making art: the nature of the space between people and how art, and love, can transcend that space; the psychological weight that the acts of writing and mark-making can carry and convey; the feeling that by tracing the marks another person has made, I can become closer to them, maybe even can BE them for a moment. For me, this process is an enactment of our uniquely human capacity for empathy, without which, meaningful communication with others would be impossible.
