The following quotations have been pulled from an hour-long studio visit with the artist, with minor edits made for brevity.
On the underlying themes of her work:
I had an epiphany recently that the central theme of my art practice is this whole idea of erasure. Of having a fear, and dwelling on, what gets to stay and what leaves.
There is an ongoing emphasis on the act of wanting to preserve things, and having an anxiety around emotional hoarding.
On magic and the creative process:
Artworks feel really good to me when I come to them by coincidence, like when I have been sitting and marinating on something and it physical-izes for me. But when I am trying too hard to seek out a serendipitous moment that feels important, there's too much pressure on it.
I think you have to practice impulsivity and suspending your disbelief about everything, not wondering what will happen. Like the opposite of science.
But I think it's so easy to feel like the magic has run out… and then I get really depressed really quickly. How sustainable is serendipity? I don’t know.
But that circles back to the whole theme of wanting to preserve something, to keep something non-physical alive.
On materials:
I am trying to move away from an emotional attachment to material… I was trying to think of every piece I have ever made and the action that drives it, because I think that is more interesting to me than the finished artwork.
I want a shiny beautiful thing that feels impressive – that people can look at and think wow. But I have realized I don’t actually want to put my effort and time into something like that.
I cycle through materials — I am not one of those artists who has A Material... There are so many artists who have an emotional attachment to something physical, and I wish I did, because I feel like it would feel like a friend. But I don't think I’ve ever had that.
I am waiting for my goldfish to die, because so much of the work in my studio is about them. They are my muses. Because Goldfish are very existential, because they live in these time loops of 7 seconds and then their consciousness re-starts. I love those guys, but I am just kind of waiting to use them for materials.
On the studio:
I am having trouble making a mess in this studio… It is hard for me to feel like I can mess things up in here, and that is a creative block.
The space is small, so I am making stuff that I can put on the wall, so it’s not in the way. But that’s not usually the kind of artwork that I gravitate towards.
I would like to make the shift in my head from the validation I get from a gallery space…I would love it if I could think of this whole studio as a gallery… but I need to make the shift in my head that THIS is the stuff.