My work is about how power grows, inverts, and breaks.
I research the history, theory, and political consequences of how governmental and religious structures use power and how they are aesthetically resisted in turn.
As a graphic designer of 15 years, my work has evolved from creating corporate identity systems where I organized symbols, text, and colors to make new meanings and to broadcast them. It is from this space that I observed the power found in language, image representation, and the cultural conditioning that we bring to their aggregate meanings. How the message is just as important as its mode of delivery to creating a community, changing an opinion, or making an impact. I brought these lessons with me when I returned to academia to finish my Bachelor’s degree.
My thesis project explores how power dynamics in contemporary United States politics look like the European witch hunts. Emergent themes that we share with this historical period include seeking certainty during societal instability, the collaboration of state and religious influences, actions taken to justify the protection of the future, women and “othered” folks losing autonomy, and the search for and destruction of secret knowledge.
Out of this research, I am beginning to work with the book as a physical manifestation of power dynamics. I am interested in the life of the book and how it may stand for subjects of rule. It is not only a symbol for attaining knowledge or upward class mobility, but for how a public engages with ideas, objects, and institutions broadly. Why is the book simultaneously worshipped and vilified, circulated and banned, archived and burned? A society’s relationship to the book reveals that society’s relationship to power. I am curious about what happens when we intentionally destabilize this relationship and how art plays a crucial role in this process.
As an artist, I am interested in an interdisciplinary practice of printmaking, bookmaking, and drawing. I use my existing design skillset to edit imagery and set typography, creating photo-text artworks that utilize the content of my research. Artists I look to for this form include Lorna Simpson, Barbara Kruger, and Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.. I am also interested in artworks that use Americana iconography to make a broader point. Artists whose work informs this direction include Faith Ringgold, David Hammons, and Dread Scott.
My intent is to build on this research not only as an artist, but as a writer, scholar, and educator. After I graduate from Idaho State University in Spring 2027, I will pursue my Masters of Fine Arts degree, then my Doctorate of Philosophy degree in Art Theory.