Artist Statement
		In my recent sculptural work I explore connotations associated with the handmade. As such, I am currently working with handmade sweaters. The act of making sweaters brings to mind hours of labor, societal histories, and concepts of comfort and warmth. I am interested in the idea of a person spending countless hours to create something that may or may not be wanted or needed, but something that must be given. Having made sweaters for items including trees, vacuum cleaners, and groceries, the social commentary inherent in this type of production is juxtaposed with the absurdity of its application. Tree logs clothed in warm sweaters have an anthropomorphic quality that makes them ridiculous and funny, but also morbid and sad. Spending hours creating custom sweaters for these things I cannot help but project onto them a life of their own. I am fascinated by how a sweater, along with an anthropomorphic idea, changes the way people view these truncated forms. In recent work with taxidermied animal heads I explore how each could live in a domestic setting. I am trying to slip these odd moments into familiar surroundings. Employing techniques of handicraft, specifically crochet, I infuse these everyday objects with both the comfortable and the surreal. The sweaters conceal and reveal the forms simultaneously. The soft, touchable stripes of color accentuate contours and bring a formalist beauty to these figures. Utilizing familiar items and referencing the domestic, I introduce the viewer to an uncanny reality that is strange, yet plausible. This absurd domesticity resurrects these inanimate objects and brings them to a new life. These logs, deer heads and trees are no longer objects of only passing thought, but require deeper contemplation. My sculptures are both sad and amusing, straddling the line between reality and comfortable, warm nonsense.