Senior Thesis Installation
2019 - 2020
My environmental art installation, Cultivating Luxury, communicates a duality of optimism and destruction, mimicking “life on earth after people”. My central idea revolves around the questions, “What is luxury?” and “Who has the privilege to access it?”
Disposal is a luxury. When we throw away any item we lose personal accountability for the object. This comes into conversation when our environment is increasingly becoming infected with our disposals. How can we still hold accountability to the objects we consume after we no longer have use for them?
This dystopian garden uses mechanical waste, junkyard-esque rusted and porcelain cast Mercedes-Benz engine parts, with optimistic moss and greenery. I am examining how consumer luxuries have social capital until we dispose of them. Disappearing to our vision but still defacing the earth while the natural world decomposes their scar.
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Enormity Exhibition
2019 - Attleboro Arts Museum
Nathaniel Philbrick’s book In the Heart of the Sea, quickly became the inspiration for an assignment for Sculpture 2 at Wheaton College. With a chance to share our work with a greater community, the works inspired by the NEA Big Read of 2019, evolved into an exhibition with the diligent work of Executive Director and Chief Curator Mim Fawcett. I created two works for the exhibition themed and titled Enormity. The first of these works was titled Global Scrimshaw, the second The Taste of Survival.
Global Scrimshaw
Materials: Rusted fuel tank
The vessel of an old fuel tank surfaces a relation to a whale body, sought after by The Essex for oil. Scars on the rusted fuel tank are intentionally placed to relay a story or snapshot of an experience. The historical significance of resources, scarify the nation in many forms of disposed waste that further tell a story of development. This work draws a connection between the whale's carcasses that were wasted among the waves after being drained of oil and the fuel that is fracked from the ground and liter the ground with decomposing junk.
the Taste of survival
Materials: blood, glass, paper, & twine
An account of each man who died during the trial of the Essex has been accounted for by a vase. Due to an unfortunate twist of events, the crew of the Essex turned to cannibalism to survive their defeated journey. The blood and flesh the survivors consumed were their only means to stay alive. Each jar has a tag labeled with the name and death date for the lost men on the voyage.
Softwood Seat
2017
During my Public Art class, as a Sophmore at Wheaton College, I submitted an art proposal for a groovy bench design. I was chosen to install my design and received approval and a grant as well as two of my classmates to construct the project. A short while after installing the bench on the Wheaton Campus, and titling it Softwood Seat, the college added it to their permanent art collection. The collection of photos below includes the process and results of constructing the Softwood Seat.
Candle Babies
2017
For a multiples project in my Public Art class, we learned how to sculpt, apply silicone molding, and cast multiples from the molds. Using these skills I made a project titled, Liquidated Innocence. I used a gradient of candle waxes to tint the small figures from light pink to deep purple. The public art installation was placed on a platform outside the dance studio and the Pappas Fitness Center. The work illustrates the innocence of infants whos innocence remains, symbolically in the form of an unlit candle.
