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Visual Artist
Visual Artist
From my Thesis Statement and Proposal, February 2018:
How They Live: An Exploration and Critique of the American “Dream”
I had just a few days to gather what I could from my parent’s house. Before you stepped through the threshold, the outward decay was visible. The rotting wooden steps, nails precariously sticking out, paint peeling off the sides of the house, 281 Princeton Street in North Chelmsford, Massachusetts suffered from years of neglect. So did the inhabitants inside. Both of my parents died before they could go on Medicare or AARP, before they could see me graduate from Grad school, or before my niece lost her first baby tooth. While they were alive, the house was a sort of purgatory, surrounded by a horde of cheaply made items that held little economic value. This modest house on the border of Lowell was enveloped by a neighborhood teetering on either boom or bust as if one foreclosure could barrel the community downwards. My parents barely knew their neighbors, so if they died in the house, would anyone know that they were there? When I opened the door one last time, I found a house empty of people but full of the detritus of isolation and despair. There were dust encrusted teacups that were never used, old photographs of a family long passed and sooner forgotten, piles of scratch tickets, debt collection notices, cigarette butts in decorative ashtrays. The smell of oil, smoke, and cat piss sunk into every layer of drywall, of grout, of the wrinkles on my parent’s faces, and in my pores.
It is from my upbringing and the sudden death of my parents that I have developed the conversations between objects, materials, and the environment. Using video, sculpture, performance, photography, and the manipulation of found objects, I reflect on my background. Situated uncomfortably between the aspirations of the American Dream and “white trash”, I am grappling with my hybrid economic class and social identity. I use personal story-telling through installation to confront with the circumstances surrounding death, consumption, and the pitfalls of a family trying to achieve the “American Dream” And in turn, I ask the viewers: where does the value of your home, your neighborhood, and most importantly, yourself fit within the American culture of toxic individualism and greed. During my first year, I investigated several buildings in Jamaica Plain that are slated to be torn down and made into luxury condos. First using ceramic, I made a model of these houses suggest the notion of preciousness. Painted white, the homes become ghost-like, alluding to a memory or memorial. Then I reflected on my profession of five years, cake decorating. I have always found it ironic that customers will spend hundreds of dollars on a cake, that at its base is made of simple, cheap ingredients, to only consume it at a party and then forgotten about. I turned to these skills and observations to create the buildings from cake and sugar. Gold food dye was used to paint the exterior of the buildings in reflection of the tacky facades of Trump Tower. Nonpareils, which are rainbow sugar sprinkles (and in French means “without parallel”) coat the cakes and appear in other pieces. Altogether, these materials suggest decadence and consumption, of simple pleasures and the American Dream. Yet these buildings, like their food counterparts, are deemed disposable by those with money. As Jamaica Plain is sold off to large real estate companies like City Realty and long-time residents are displaced, I think of my parents and their house. The house that was sold to a house flipper and is now in process of being gutted, the contents were thrown into a dumpster. I think of their isolation within a thickly settled neighborhood and how their house represented decades of unabashed consumerism to assuage mental anguish. During my last year, I have begun to compound the stories of a neighborhood in transition and the dissolution of my family as entry points to discuss the role of capitalism in American life. It is here at the confluence of Jamaica Plain and 281 Princeton St, I question who gets to decide the worth of a home, of a family, and of a neighborhood.
How They Live
2018. Live video feed of cake and single channel video “Weltschmerz” projected onto wall, found objects, single channel video “(Gathering) 112 Pounds”
Thesis installation at the Aidekman Art Center at Tufts University
How They Live
2018. Live video feed of cake and single channel video “Weltschmerz” projected onto wall, found objects, single channel video “(Gathering) 112 Pounds”
Thesis installation at the Aidekman Art Center at Tufts University
How They Live
Detail shot
2018. Live video feed of cake and single channel video “Weltschmerz” projected onto wall, found objects, single channel video “(Gathering) 112 Pounds”
Thesis installation at the Aidekman Art Center at Tufts University