As the pieces that make my body of work finally come together, I find it useful to return to the heart of my research as well as the artists and writers who inspired me in the first place. In her 2016 book Staying With the Trouble, author Donna Haraway emphasizes the importance of creativity and collaboration as community sustaining forces during challenging times. She advocates for making “kin in lines of inventive connection,” an ethos important to my studio practice in which I draw from many disciplines I am passionate about. I hope to make kin by learning from other researchers in the realms of fine art, technology, wildlife, and conservation, and by using what I have learned to meaningfully contribute to ongoing conversations and histories within those disciplines.
Haraway is one of many authors I am inspired by who are reexamining what it means to be human in our technologically advanced world, and I hope that by synergizing their ideas with the work conducted by climate and wildlife scientists in Florida, I might be able to strike a connection with my audience here and strengthen a common spirit of stewardship towards the land.
Also present in my work is an ethos of play. As I make the components of my sculptures without hardware, I am also creating an archive of interchangeable landscape and animal forms which can fit together in near countless permutations to create new hybrid and collaborative spaces in any exhibition room. As I plan my works, I like to think about the ideas of Alan Kaprow, an influential 20th-century performance artist whose artworks challenged the traditional art canon and embraced play and experimentation. His contributions to the performance art tradition eventually inspired artists like Second Front and Angela Washko, who recontextualized the artmaking philosophies of artists like Kaprow to pioneer new modes of artmaking, collaboration, and performance in new media like video games. These newer artists inspire the exploratory interventions I hold in games like the Fallout series to derive new forms and compositions for my artwork.
As this body of work draws to a close, I am already considering how my research will inform the next. This upcoming Spring, I will be completing my BFA thesis body of work as I finish undergrad. Following that, I will transition full time into the Art Education MA pathway where I will be applying my creative research skills to design student projects and curriculum. I hope to pursue an additional graduate certificate in Museum Education and Visitor Centered Curation and broaden the professional scope of my interests in creative interpretation and education. I am immensely appreciative of the many experiences the Idea Grant has enabled me to learn from, and I feel much more confident moving towards the creation and presentation of my next bodies of work. Thank you all for reading and supporting me throughout my creative research endeavors.
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