spiral (or, ephemerality of empire) was made in 2019 when my attention was largely devoted to the pre-election news cycle. Amid hours of (doom)scrolling through headlines, I found solace watching science documentaries. I became interested in the aesthetic similarities between neuron fire, stars, and the whitecaps of oceanic movement – flickering, fleeting, ageless phenomena that may challenge our relative understanding of time. At that time, I feared an imminent end to American democracy and viewed the clown as a symbol for the United States. I now think of the clown in broader terms, able to symbolize any number of personalities, systems, states, and powers: all of which exist as mere blips of the cosmos. (As a Bokononist might say, "busy, busy, busy.")
polarization, from the same untitled body of work, was made between 2020-2023. Shortly after moving to Indiana, I noticed a newsstand in Brown County stocked with two papers. One side was labeled "Democrat" while the other read "Republican." Increasingly perturbed by social media algorithms, echo-chambers, divisive rhetoric, and the Democratic Party's demonstrable shift to the right, I intended to posit America's two parties as sides of the same coin (or leaf). There is hardly a 'lesser of two evils.'