Installation with paintings
Coulter Art Gallery
Installation exhibition as part of the Holt Visiting Artist Residency duties with Stanford’s Art Practice Program.
Comfort Room
Project Type: Wofford
Battlefield III (Choices)
2023
painting: acrylic on wood panels and shapes
as exhibited at Museum of Craft and Design
Legendary Bay Area rapper E-40 has a song called Choices (Yup); in it, he posits that everyone has choices to make, and asks a series of questions that are answered “Yup” or “Nope”. Much of the song is the usual braggadocio, but it is fantastic, hypnotic, and deeply Bay Area, so much so that he rewrote it as a Golden State Warriors anthem , too.
For an exhibition on crafting a Bay Area life, I chose to navigate my own choices to stay or leave as a Bay Area native. This diptych’s composition is based on a stylized basketball court layout as I’ve considered whether I’m to remain the home team or the away team. I choose home, but being away is professionally necessary to play the game, too.
Ever since the terrible “Orange Day” of wildfire smoke in 2020, I have employed the complementary colors of blue and orange in certain projects. When you mix two complements, you get a range of more neutral shades: these shades are the fog and mist which move across this composition as well. Fog is such an enduring fact of life in San Francisco. It’s not easy to make clean “yup/nope” choices here in the Bay Area: decisions can be shrouded in fog, and held in a state of in-between-ness.
Portals + Battlefields
2022
paintings: acrylic on canvas
as exhibited at Silverlens
6 paintings included in ‘Aquifer’, an exhibition with MM Yu and Dina Gadia at Silverlens Gallery, Philippines. These paintings evolve Wofford’s ‘Rupturre’ project which speaks to history and crisis. However, this recent work is less about abrupt rupture while still being about change and other unstable, mutable energies shifting beneath the surface.
Images or terms that have informed this work, and the shapes and patterns within them: Energy. Mysteries. Spells. Portals. Power. Protection. Containment. Liminality. Neuroplasticity. Electricity. Psychedelia. Vision. Rage. Grief. Loss. Calamity. Battlefields. Flow vs break. Fluidity vs rigidity.
Non Verbis Sed Rebus
2022
Indoor mural with wood panels and components
12 ft h x 40 ft w
Facebook San Francisco
Meta Open Arts
While not a rebus in the traditional usage of the term, this piece is still intended as a visual puzzle, of sorts. It is a reflection on creative process and all manner of problem-solving. Its title comes from the Latin phrase, “Not by Words, but by Things.” Patterns on the mural refer to this process: lightning for energy and ideas, ginkgo for persistence and longevity. The speech bubbles contain icons rather than words, since cognition and communication don’t always live in language. The square panels address locality and place, and refer to sites visible from the building’s windows. The wandering break line refers to earthquakes and other forms of rupture that are both destructive and generative.
Fire Season
2021
installation/works on paper
installation shown here: Berkeley Art Center
*new acquisition of the Asian Art Museum
September 9, 2020 was Northern California’s infamous “Orange Day,” when wildfire smoke choked the Bay Area, turning the skies into a doomsday scenario. This specific date, compounded with the early months of the pandemic and other tragic national and personal events, spurred on this body of work.
Fire Season employs the complementary/contrasting colors of orange and blue for both tension and relief, as well as solitary figures and boxed forms to embody climate crisis, public health crisis, and personal crisis.
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