Among the Shrubbery invites viewers into a colorful, joyful and garish landscape that reimagines online cruising culture in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a space that speaks to the multilayered and complex relationships presented within the contemporary queer world in which I exist. Using imagery suggesting glory holes, this work offers an entryway into a world of worms and semen, an invisible underground bursting with life. Prodding body parts and vintage Nokia cell phones are among the characters in this ambiguously sweet, dark and hedonistic world that exists to play, fuck and perpetuate pleasure.
Among the Shrubbery grounds my experiences during quarantine through my relationship with fiber as a medium. I utilize needle and wet felting techniques, which allows for painterly images with a high degree of precision and detail. Often overlooked by the world of highbrow contemporary art, the medium of fiber pushes back against these predisposed ideas of high and low culture, while also building a parallel to how the queer experience is often overlooked within our society. I examine my desire to work in felt which is born from a space of agitation and pressure, the very elements that are required to transform raw fiber into felt. Held in congruence the playful impulsiveness of my practice, these material qualities become emblematic of my experience as a queer gay male in culture which requires the equivalent amount of agitation, pressure, transformation and playfulness as a matter of survival.
Part of the permenant collection at Bird TLC (Teaching and Learning Center) in Anchorage, Alasaka. 2018
A solo exhibition focused on Fowl at Next Gallery, 2018.
Solo Show at NEXT Gallery 2017
Solo exhibition at Next Gallery, 2016.
Some toothy stressed animals from 2017-2018
Series from 2015-16.