Safe Foods
2024
Aluminum foil, stone clay, Hershey’s kisses wrappers and plumes, found objects, cardstock, spray paint, acrylic paint, glass microbead paint
inspired by David Seltzer, Sea Salt/Lemon Sage
With celiac disease, every meal is a risk. Gluten hides everywhere, from restaurant griddles to soy sauce and licorice. Since my diagnosis, I’ve identified “safe foods” I can always trust not to set off an intestine-destroying immune response: whole fruit, plain potato chips, most hot dogs, Hershey’s chocolate. When I’m stranded and hungry, I look for them. Drawing on the bright colors and abstract inedibility of David Seltzer’s Sea Salt/Lemon Sage, I made my safe foods easier to find by rendering them in an ANSI-inspired worksite safety palette. Use the headlamp for the full high-visibility experience.
This sculpture appeared in ArtsWorcester's Feast: Call and Response with the Fitchburg Art Museum.
It will appear at the Fitchburg Art Museum in summer 2024.
Trash Paintings, 2020-ongoing
Mixed media art waste (often including acrylic, PVA glue, paper, cardboard, and Sculptamold) on canvas board
In my series 'Trash Paintings', I only use materials left over from other art projects—unused acrylic paint lingering on the palette, sheets of half-dried glue from the morning after a papier-mache session, snippets of cardboard picked off the floor. Creating with waste emboldens me to explore textures and compositions I'm scared will be ugly. What's the worst that could happen? It's already trash.
Paintings from this series appeared in the ArtsWorcester Eleventh Annual One and Scaled Down.
"Evacuation", January 2023
Paper clay, air dry clay, acrylic paint, varnish, PVA glue, and plastic charms on canvas
I was recently diagnosed with celiac disease after 18 years of worsening chronic diarrhea. People with celiac have an autoimmune reaction to gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye, and barley. I had to keep eating gluten while I waited months for a biopsy to confirm my illness, despite knowing that it was making my intestines attack themselves. This relief sculpture is about feeling betrayed by foods I trusted to be safe and by my own body, and about the grief of giving up the breads and pastries tied to so many happy memories and family traditions.
"The Wound Will Not Heal", November 2022
Paper clay, spackle, acrylic paint, PVA glue, varnish, expired medication, and Unicorn Milk pearlescent topcoat on canvas
I'm sick and disabled. Every day I take pills. At my worst I was throwing back fifteen a day. I get so fed up I could scream. I am filled to bursting with anti-inflammatories and beta blockers and pain meds and antidepressants and vitamins, filled until I could tear open. This relief sculpture did not bring me ease, but did let me reveal for a moment what I normally hold back.
Appeared in The Twentieth ArtsWorcester Biennial and won the Youth Committee Honorable Mention
"Bread", December 2022
Acrylic on canvas
Ruminating on what I am losing with my celiac diagnosis.
"Mask", October 2022
Paper, acrylic paint, thread, PVA glue, and polyfill stuffing on paper mask blank
Made during a craft night at Technocopia
"Snake", February 2020
Acrylic and gloss top coat on canvas
