DRAWINGS
LANDSCAPE SKETCHES
PROJECTS and INSTALLATIONS
VICTORY VICTUALS
“Victory Victuals,” aboard the historic USS Olympia. This work was included in an exhibition entitled “Artship Olympia” curated by the Philadelphia Sculptors in collaboration with the Independence Seaport Museum, Philadelphia, PA, 2016.
“Victory Victuals” highlighted the historically overlooked, yet vital aspect of the lives of the sailors— their diet, as well as the distinction between rank and class reflected in the naval rations. While officers dined on freshly frozen meet, the common sailor subsisted on a diet high in starch— mostly of hardtack, potatoes and salted tinned meat. Cooked side by side in the same galley kitchen but worlds apart in terms of variety, flavor and presentation. The privileged class enjoyed personal space, privacy and fine dining while the common sailors prepared their food on the floor, slept side by side divided only by canvas and ate off of enameled metal plates. My sculptural works aimed to illuminate this distinction between the diets of the common sailors compared to the diet of the officers during the first Commissions of the Olympia.
ROBINSONADEN
This project (Robinsonaden) was created at R.A.I.R. an artist residency in North Easth Philadelphia located within a waste management and recycling center called Revolution Recovery. I viewed the waste stream at R.A.I.R. (www.rairphilly.org) as an (is)land, full of bounty from which I created a body of work that explored modes of nautical adventure and survival. I exhibited the work at the PSG Gallery following the voyage. I titled the exhibition Robinsonaden, referring to the literary genre of survivalist fiction inspired by Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe.
With the help of Raul Jose Romero, we documented the maiden voyage of the Want Knot, the 17.5’ flat bottom boat I constructed out of salvaged materials from Revolution Recovery and rowed down the Delaware River.
DOVECOTES
DOVECOTES were predominately prevalent in Virginia by British settlers in the seventeenth century, not only as a food source, but also “as an architectural marvel, an eye-catcher, a thing of beauty.” Relatively large, they could house up to one thousand nesting boxes, or as few as ten. I constructed these DOVECOTES for the Southern Chester County Sculpture Trail in Oxford, PA. Each DOVECOTE inspired by the form of a different traditional Pennsylvanian Barn. Celebrating the beauty of the agrarian history of Chester County while bringing to light a lost historic practice.
BIRTHING CHAIRS
This project aims to bring into existence a physical replication of the material history of the birthing chair, marking the physical changes that reflect the evolution of thought and cultural ideologies surrounding birth. This body of work focuses on understanding birthing chairs as physical objects, understanding their dimensional orientation and how they fit together with the women who used them.
THE SERVANT QUESTION
This Body of work was created during a residency at Winterthur Museum and Gardens just outside of Wilmington, DE in 2013. Working in response to the 195 room once home, now museum full of decorative art works, I created objects (and replications) that played off of Henry Francis DuPont’s way of exhibiting his collections in “period” rooms.
TRADITIONAL WAYS OF MAKING
