Artist Statement
In researching the subject of desire, my main interest lies in how constructed stereotypes around sexual emotions, experiences, and identities are propagated in mass-produced images and print material. Sourcing romance novels, erotic magazines, personals ads and text messages, I extract miscellaneous and ambiguous bits of sexual language and symbolism and piece together drawings, collages and textile objects that subvert the original messages and context. Deconstructing these cultural signifiers opens up gaps in which I can reconstruct my own complicated narrative as a nerdy Appalachian queer guy. Manifested as a multi-layered collage of text, images, patterned cloth, personal clothing and found materials, these saturated works question our larger social constructions of normality and abnormality, pleasure and disturbance, high and low culture, as they pertain to ideas of love, romance, sex and sexuality.
In researching the subject of desire, my main interest lies in how constructed stereotypes around sexual emotions, experiences, and identities are propagated in mass-produced images and print material. Sourcing romance novels, erotic magazines, personals ads and text messages, I extract miscellaneous and ambiguous bits of sexual language and symbolism and piece together drawings, collages and textile objects that subvert the original messages and context. Deconstructing these cultural signifiers opens up gaps in which I can reconstruct my own complicated narrative as a nerdy Appalachian queer guy. Manifested as a multi-layered collage of text, images, patterned cloth, personal clothing and found materials, these saturated works question our larger social constructions of normality and abnormality, pleasure and disturbance, high and low culture, as they pertain to ideas of love, romance, sex and sexuality.
