In late 2018 I was told my maternal family home was being put on the real estate market. This was the home that my grandmother raised four children in; on property fragmented by eminent domain in their childhood to become a small section of interstate 95-North. This was the home she died in, receiving end-of-life care as Alzheimer's disease made a place that was so familiar become foreign, alien. The house sold in 2023, rekindling deep, difficult feelings. Some wounds do not heal cleanly and re-open too quickly. This drawing, and the series it belongs to, is an attempt to collect myself.

To follow the trajectory of this creative thread, see the 2019 series For Sale: Mailbox Studies

Motif Number One, Birdhouse

Motif Number One, a red fishing shack that has stood for over 180 years in Rockport MA, is a well-known and beloved coastal attraction for plein-air painters. Instead of spending time in-situ with the shack in the baking sun amid throngs of tourists, I chose to paint a series depicting a birdhouse modeled after it. I also experimented with a digitally-rendered model I created to further push the formal potential of this object.

For Sale: Mailbox Studies

In late 2018 I was told that the property my maternal family owned for generations was being put on the real estate market. For Sale: Mailbox Studies I - VIII attempts to parse out my emotional connection to the land and to reflect on its history in lieu of the impending sale.

Google Maps allows users to toggle between street-view photography taken over time. The resulting visual record of Damon Road from 2009 to 2018 has been useful as an archive of the subtle changes in the property.

I gravitated towards the mailboxes that mark the home my mother grew up in. There are two mailboxes. One is for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, the local newspaper. The other, with dairy cows in front of a red barn, stood proudly when my grandparents were alive but steadily and extravagantly deteriorated after my grandmother passed away. Held together with bungee cords, duct tape, and with cow imagery peeling off like the skin of an onion, this object is a succinct visualization of the property's slow decline.

After Atlas

The After Atlas series is a formalist study of an old USA road atlas. The roadmaps were cut-up, collaged, and used to influence composition and color. I gravitated towards the demarcation of certain areas: the beautiful dotted and dashed lines, muted palette, symbols, and relationships between organic and geometric boundaries.

From Still Life I - X

A photoshoot of assembled kitsch objects and studio supplies helped inform the compositions for this series of ten paintings.

Rendered, Contained

I modelled a box with a hole cut out from one side in a 3D-rendering program. Using the computer screen as a viewfinder, I was able to yield a variety of compositions solely by adjusting the vantage point of the 'viewer' to the 'subject'.

DERBY: An Interactive Sculpture Raceway

DERBY: An Interactive Sculpture Raceway, on view at the Godine Family Gallery, Boston from April 9 - 14, 2017, riffed on the concept and competitive spirit of the Boy Scouts’ famous Pinewood Derby. Curated by Ian Gage and I, Derby served as spiritual successor to Putt Putt: A Playable Mini Golf Course, displayed in the Student Life Gallery a year prior. Emphasis on interactivity helped to set apart these shows from their counterparts. Artists created kinetic sculptures—be they car or anti-car—that gallery visitors could race along a custom-made, six lane, 34–foot long track bisecting the gallery. Also included were 2D submissions that addressed concepts of racing, speed, and competition, as well as murals of scouts gearing up for the derby.

A total of 20 artists created 37 cars, ultimately arrayed resplendent with all the fixings of a real raceway. Examples of cars included those made entirely of raw potatoes, an internally lit unicorn riding a cloud, a wheel covered in wheels, and an enormous Milk Duds box replica.

The reception on April 13, 2017 featured an 11–heat bracketed tournament which determined the first, second, and third place champions. All the pageantry of a traditional derby, including a judge and parents of the entrants, made it a memorable night.

(from Twitch.com)

In 2016 I created a series of paintings about Twitch.com, a live-streaming video platform:

Golf Thoughts

In March 2016 I participated in Putt-Putt, a group exhibition of MassArt alumni and students on view in the Student Life Gallery, Boston. The goal of this exhibition was to create a series of interactive sculptures that would collectively serve as a playable mini golf course. My contribution to this project was Golf Thoughts, an installation with a video projected onto the gallery wall, and several paintings installed on astroturf.

T.A.C.D.

T.A.C.D. (Thinking About Computer Death) are meditations on the spontaneous and alarming visual glitches that occurred for several months on my relatively-new laptop. I was very anxious about its seemingly inevitable death, and also grateful for the bounty of beautiful, disquieting imagery it produced.

Works from 2015:

Works from 2014: