RECENT ARTWORK
ARTIST STATEMENT
Embracing both skills used by the working class and artistic adroitness, I aim to combine the skills often associated with blue collar labor with those traditionally taught in a fine art environment. I pull inspiration from the environments I create my work in, either rural Nebraska or the working class city of Chicago.
I aim to bring attention to the challenges labor workers face through a lens of humor. In this way, my work is about blue collar worker representation, but it's also about the social issues affecting the rural midwest. These issues range from alcoholism, union busting, masculinity to class frustrations. Employing humor and irony, I illustrate these issues in a critical way while using rural motifs to narrate the everyday life and issues of the midwest.
When I create, I often think about the line that separates the trades with fine art and what can I do to disturb that boundary. This boundary of fine art and labor, and how I can get these two gears to grind against each other in harmony is part of what drives me to create. While working on a piece, I'm reminded of my family's history of the trades, working as mechanics, carpenters, electricians, and plumbers, and how the skills they used in their work I now use to create art. Starting with an idea, then physically shaping it into something that reflects the idea and sense of possibility I have in my head, this is what drives me to make it.