My work is concerned with the sacred collision and interpenetration of various forms of divinity: nature, mythology, psychology and metaphysics. I am interested in the fundamental mystery embedded within the practice of storytelling, in drawing connections between seemingly disparate objects and elucidating relationships between similar materials.
Within unexpected relationships, a commonality exists between Dr. Seuss and the Dalai Lama, a spider web mimics a wheel, and a resemblance between patterns in the constellations of the stars and the minute particles inside the human body is revealed:
A cave, an egg, a curtain, a veil are all entry points into the theater of life, a story that plays out in ways both full of terror and of beauty.
The mind revels in separation, putting ideas into categories, trying to make sense of the world, while the spirit employs the senses and the body to illuminate all things as one. The microcosm and the macrocosm curiously coincide, reinventing and dissolving the boundaries created by the human psyche, alchemically transmuting the “known” into the wonder which resides within all possibility.
I think about the fleeting, ephemeral nature of a butterfly and the seeming solidity of a chunk of mica as if it is an equation. What can you add or subtract to come up with a new possibility? Dredging up all materials encountered is an act of faith. What’s there may be murky and full of darkness, but what prevails is a startling transformation: As a lotus flower emerges from the mud, so too the raw materials transform into the gold of expression.
The phenomena of the universe lies buried, like layers of mica embedded deep inside the earth. I am intrigued by the versatility and dichotomy between the transparent, substantive and protective nature of the mica, the way it simultaneously acts like a lens and a shield; Just as aspects of our soul are often lost beneath protective complexes. Breaking through preconceived perceptions, you can’t help but to expose the shadow in yourself.
I navigate these depths and polarities during what those most dear to me have dubbed my ‘micaceous phase’. In the journey of where we come from, I imagine elements colliding with otherworldly universes, hanging by a delicate thread, where fate can be altered in the blink of an instant. The unseen fields or forces at play become stitched into the objects to shift perspective, unifying various physical and metaphysical realities.
Our human existence is teaming with metamorphosis; a single cell grows into a fetus and a baby becomes an adult before our very eyes, just as a butterfly emerges from the chrysalis. The very act of creating ultimately guides us back to our deepest self and reconnects us to what is simultaneously so primal and sweetly familiar; Thus providing clues or a lens to witness how far we have traveled down the path of becoming.