Artist Statement

This is a revision of my artist statement rough draft. It's still in the works, but I think this sums it up fairly well. I'll take any inputs, especially if you see something I could add thats from your knowing me and my art.

I grew up creating and building things with the toys I had at hand. It was just something I always enjoyed doing. As I grew into the world around me, it influenced what materials I used and the things I wanted to create. I was fascinated by glass blowing and wanted to use it in my own work. After graduating from Tyler School of Art, I had the skills to explore the possibilities of the material with my ideas.

While in college I developed a fondness for the imagery of trees. I created my first Industrial Bonsai piece as a single sculpture with no real intentions of making more. Often times my ideas for my work come from stumbling on objects, other ideas, sounds and images. The copper I used was found in a dumpster at school, and so used to create something new. That something became a tree.

After casting the tree in glass, and finding it to be incredibly inspiring, I wanted to create a series of them. While developing the series I began to notice trees throughout our cities, and the thousands of trees growing from concrete planters... planters that not only constrict their growth, but also their beauty. My series parallels this while taking that image to an extreme.