The following quotations have been pulled from an hour-long studio visit with the artist, with minor edits made for brevity.
ON THE STUDIO:
I always describe my studio as gloopy. I feel like it’s pretty gloopy in here.
My previous studio was a block from my house and 500 square feet, and it had access to a roof so I could watch the sunset, and I had space for a living room in it…. But I just wasn’t making, and it wasn’t feeling good.
So, I super, super downgraded in terms of square feet from my previous studio, but I feel really, really good in this little cave. I was just not making in my previous studio. The smallness has shifted my practice for the better.
And the energy in this building is incredible. It feels like a mini conclave.
I think it is really important for me to be in proximity to other people, especially other artists. I identify as a socially-motivated artist. My practice is deeply tethered to proximity and relationships and socializing.
ON MATERIALS AND PROCESSES:
I’m like a kid with glue…. I am just pouring glue all over everything …and I feel like that’s really productive and I feel really liberated and not tied down.
I don’t like wearing gloves. I don’t like wearing masks. I don’t like fucking mold making.
The respirator and gloves are absolutely a block to me.
I am a silly idiot. And when I was in school, I was a sculptor making giant sculptures and installations. And since then, in my time spent out of school with little to no resources, I am attempting to distill that ethos into small works.
This is my experiment towards: how do I make little sculptures or little wall-works that feel like the installations, or still evoke a similar affect?
I am also trying to make in a sustainable way. So, it’s all scrap wood, it’s all thrifted glass….I am trying to low-overhead-make.
A lot of my practice is waiting to get permission to use a material. I don’t use a material or subject matter until it comes into my life through a social relationship.
ON EXHIBITING WORK:
It's funny because I think of all the work in my studio is bad until I get to arrange it in the exhibition space, because I am such an installation artist. In the studio I think that things are relatively less alive.
I am really interested in the display system and the poetic in which we first approach the work. My work looks best in low lighting. I make things for the dark.
ON MANAGING THE ART WORLD:
I am really interested in value, and value systems, and also ecology in my work… I think the museum completely sedates artwork. The role of the museum is to sustain value and produce value. So, art becomes an art object, and there is no longer art in a museum there are only art objects. Which are these monetary things.
That’s why I like my art in people’s homes, because I think that’s where the life is.
And this is why I quit making art for 8 months. I was upset about this exact thing – when does the art stop becoming art?
I said: I’m not making fucking sculpture, I’m just gonna host parties. So, I would host art house parties and that was my work.
I would host a bi-weekly cabaret in the studio, where I would build sets for one-night-only, and people would just get drunk, and it was like a talent show. I would send out a theme the week of so that you have four days to prepare.
And that was the work, and I refused to document it.
But when I have friends over, I am like oh, this is the practice.