"Whether it is the beautiful that brings to our hearts the love of truth and justice, or whether it is truth that teaches us how to find the beautiful in nature and how to love it, in either case art does a noble work. It drags out the soul from its everyday shell, and brings it under the spell of its own mysterious and wonderful power, so that a memory of this experience stays with the people, sustains them in their daily labors, and refines their minds." - Helena Modjeska
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As we become adults, childhood magic and the sense of wonder begins to dull, along with the creativity we hold within us. In my work I attempt to heal this type of desensitization. I want to push people to become more aware of the beauty and magic in the objects and world around us. If we take a moment to stop limiting ourselves, we can begin exploring with new concepts and positive views of the world. We have a chance to create, ask questions, and challenge our environments. By tapping into people’s imaginations and playing with what they think they might know, I provide an experience to challenge our dulled mundane way of grown up thinking.
I work with imaginative playful ideas based off of science fiction or fantasy. “Neverland” is a 42"x24"x18" flying ship derived from the ship in Peter Pan. It grew out of my desire to hold bring attention to holding onto childlike faith and imagination. This concept has become important to me as I deal with reactivating youthful innocence through an exploratory approach to creativity. This ship and other works I’ve been making such as my strictly glass telescope “Vaporize” have been part of my discovery of imagination. I use glass as a mysterious material. Due to its shine and its transparency forms made in glass appear ghostly and ephemeral, while at the same time new and real. When life and reality get hard to face, using imagination to take you somewhere else or to look at something or create in a different way can be used as a way of coping. For me, making my art is a way of coping, expressing, exploring, and refreshing the world. |