Informed by my Southern heritage, I use my artwork to confront ingrained cultural expectations regarding gender roles and class mobility. On a broader scale, I investigate how people adopt cultural and gender identity through objects and behaviors. Using fictional functions, campy performances, and satirical videos, I target media-driven modes that perpetuate stereotypes, while pinpointing our culture’s long-standing fascination with a nostalgic ideal. My experience as a Southern woman informs my art practice in ways both material and conceptual. I make my work by hand; I tell my stories with the drama and pause with which they were told to me (in the South, we talk around a subject for the sake of storytelling. We are not direct, but our opinions are understood through context and mood).

As the first in my family to graduate from college and the only one to attend graduate school, I fulfilled the dreams that were set for me and defied the odds that were bet for me. I am both an insider and an outsider to my family. It is a singular space to exist, intriguing and lonely, and much of my art practice is a reflection and projection of my origins and my purpose.

Using humor and nostalgia, my work blends functional objects with campy performances and satirical videos. These elements pull from my background in theatre and contextualize the handmade objects, whose functions are somewhat ambiguous. The resulting domestic scenarios illustrate absurd assumptions about family, relationships, and cultural expectations. The aesthetic is approachable, the ideas accessible, and the audience hopefully engages with vulnerability and openness.