We met each other some time ago and even before learning of your incredible dedication to your craft, I immediately felt the spark that indicates for me that you are one very special individual. So where do we start? Hmmmmmmm....ok let’s start with early years. Where did you grow up and how did you get to the Garden State?

It is such a joy to live in a community where the arts are highly valued. I first thank you and the Local team for always facilitating an atmosphere of warmth and love and for this opportunity to exhibit my work. I started in Sonora, California located in the foothills of Sierra Nevada close to the Yosemite National Park. I loved being close to the caves, lakes, and being present with nature. I moved to the Garden State, close to Warwick, NY after fleeing my father where my grandmother and uncle raised me along with my siblings. As I got older, I moved around quite a bit, living in different states, traveling; but found myself circling back to New Jersey now based in Montclair. I love this gem of a place. People look out for one another just as the local bike shop here saves discarded tires and bike scraps for me, knowing I can use them in future installations or set designs.

I previously asked about nature vs. nurture relative to your work. Provided how much depth and storytelling is in your work - do you know how you arrived at this medium?

Oh yes, arguably the oldest controversial debates by psychologists or even when elucidated by Prospero in The Tempest. There are a multitude of forces where I don’t feel there’s an easy way to disentangle the two. They are not inconsistent; but rather complementary to each other. Often working intuitively drawing inspiration from my past and the environment around me, the subject matter and theme of each body of work determines the materials and the forms of the work. During research new areas of interest arise where my creative impulses lead to the next body of work resulting in the manifestation of my emotional expression.

A running joke was that I came out of the womb painting imagery with my own shit. As a kid, art and storytelling was a way of escape from family dysfunction. One piece I held onto was from the age of five where I had my sister pose in our jungle-like backyard and incorporated pieces of nature into the piece. Growing up with very little, I was consistently creating with discarded objects or materials accessible. That element of being resourceful has carried over into my current art practice as a way to remind the public how much waste is generated by humans. I don’t like to limit myself to one medium as I’ll add another element, but keep the energy running through it. Further, my work is a product of interdisciplinary collaboration involving various mediums as I believe they all relate to each other when exploring notions of sustainability and vulnerability, pieces of my personal ethos.

Your work has some powerful messages and arguably some controversial themes but yet I never feel like it’s pedantic or your dictating a POV. How do you achieve this so effortlessly?

I attempt to empathize with the human experience; parsing the relationship between organisms and bodily structures and what it might mean to bridge the gap between the natural and manmade. I tap into the language around the human psyche as my work explores perhaps taboo topics, asks questions, evokes emotion, and provokes a psychological response in the viewer. I want viewers to question the choices we make daily. I think the questions can find their own answers and offer solutions, rather than tackling an extremist point of view.

Please share an overview of the work you graciously shared here at Local.

My work can be seen as a narrative of personal trauma and the trauma of the earth due to human intervention. There is a deep pain that is attached with being misunderstood, forgotten, and taken advantage of, and a sense of jarring awareness when we are stripped of our personhood or our identity. This could also be true of the very place we call home; our ecosystems. I am an advocate for using recycled materials, at times using up-cycled trash in my art to raise awareness of pollution and the human mark on the environment. My work encourages giving a voice to those who are often unheard and how the fragmentation of the mind can be pieced back together.

The Unspoken Series emerged out of a performance piece while in Scotland where I positioned myself in a discarded bathtub reciting poetry filled with dirt sourced from various landmarks, pomegranates, and the ‘five senses’ which were 3-D printed using biodegradable materials. These are stills from the performance turned into waterless lithography prints. The performance piece entitled, The Dirt Still Remains, tells the story of a traumatic event where the five senses were taken as the fruit is marked and heavily bruised. Through the process of cleansing they are slowly being returned; however the damage never fully goes away. There’s something so empowering and healing when using my body as a tool for an endurance performance. I am interested in the psychological aspect of training the body and mind to leave a state of comfort and complacency. I find it to be a freeing experience as within my performances there’s a recurring theme of spontaneity.

Begin to Heal emerged from my Five Senses Series originally drawn and printed in 2019. In 2020, I revisited this work and hand printed the drawings on homemade paper using abaca and gambi fiber. Begin to Heal suggests the potential for inner healing in the midst of social isolation due to COVID-19.

Blended Catastrophe, Breathless, and Reflection are prints of original oil paintings adhered to up-cycled wood panels reflecting upon our environmental crisis; bringing awareness and empowerment in order to minimize the carbon, plastic, and trash footprint and make strides to become more sustainable.

Your creative gifts are shared visually and audibly - but they also are applied to your professional career. Can you tell us what Art Therapy means to you?

It’s facilitating an environment to foster emotional, mental well being, and healing. People have been relying on the arts to communicate, express themselves, and heal for thousands of years. Art is a way of therapy where I am processing things I struggle to verbalize, perhaps a form of communication between my unconscious and conscious mind so working with adults with severe brain trauma I feel as though has aided in the continuation of my own healing. There’s something magical that happens when we broaden our perspective and jump over the hurdles of imposed discrimination, seeing human for human. The possibilities are endless in how art can create a safe space for growth, change, and inner healing.

Before my uncle's death, a father figure in my life, he suffered from a traumatic brain injury. My fondness memory with him was excursions to the maple trees and making homemade syrup together. This experience in nature was the first time I related human trauma to the earth’s trauma. Perhaps this is why I’m so captivated and drawn to the work I do.