I am an artist, sculptor, filmmaker, and animator. I am invested in exploring how animation, art, and film forms and techniques can address political inquiries and concerns, and stories of resistance and create cultural and societal change. This investment takes on many forms both digital and analog, sculptural pieces, stop motion, 2D and 3D animation.
 

My work is Absurd, surreal, and perverse. There is an inherent narrative that infuses the sculptural objects that I make. With references to myth and allegory, my work allows me to express my sense of humor my sarcastic nature, and my overall disdain for the corrupt nature of the hierarchical structure of systemic power. I come from the world of film and animation where, although often pursued, it is tough to ignore narrative. With sculptural pieces, the narrative becomes more subdued but also precise in how each piece becomes a tableau.
 

While the pieces are taking form, a story tends to come out through the process. They become individual stages of theatre, a captured moment in time, or a single frame of a film that has been removed from the flat surface of the screen and transplanted into our world. By taking daily life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of middle-class ethics, I create work through labor-intensive processes, which can be seen overtly as a personal ceremony.
 

The work is inundated with bad jokes, clichés, and blatancy By referencing romanticism, grand-guignolesque black humor, and allegory, the pieces can be seen as self-portraits that reflect the implications of American social and cultural hegemon. My work often references George Bataille’s concept
of the “Acéphale” or the headless man. It has a cornerstone on my path of confronting the consistent class warfare that weaves through American society and the hierarchy of power that sustains the continued systemic oppression brought on by this concentration of power and wealth.
 

This begins by looking inward. Critique myself and my place in this environment. Using examples from my own experiences, my films have focused on a variety of subject matters, from growing up in Rural America, the scars of addiction that lie upon my family, and the generational trauma of poverty. From the self, I build upon my criticism and look broader at how these things permeate our culture, how the Eugenics craze of the late 19th and early 20th century created a scientific foundation to otherize minorities
and the poor.
 

My current project, Sometimes Turtles Fall from Heaven, is a black comedy-fantasy stop-motion animated film. It follows a man as he is strung along by a group of pig oligarchs who utilize rhetoric to create their Manchurian candidate. Ultimately it is a film that I am asking the specific question of how people who are like me, who grew up in the same part of the Country as I, who have a similar experience can be consumed by consistent hateful rhetoric. This rhetoric births such anger and disdain for anyone not in lockstep with their worldview that all others are inferior, and all criticism is an attack
directly on their personhood. From this perspective, I am looking inward, and asking am I different? And if I am, why?
 

My goal has always been to challenge the status quo, to challenge myself and rethink who I am, and to use this reassessment to look outward and engage directly with society and culture with art as my tool of expression and resistance.