Sound and Interdisciplinary Sculpture. In addition to my interdisciplinary sculpture class at the Conservatory, I offer one-on-one classes in interdisciplinary and sound sculpture to work with students from any discipline who are interested in exploring the intersection of visual and sound. Private classes at my studio allow me to become attuned to each student’s position, trajectory, and authenticity so as to be able to offer individualized support and guidance both in the realm of conceptual armature as well as in the physical relationship with their chosen materials.

Art for me is about discourse and sharing, a successful mediation between our cultural symbolic language and our internal one(s), both for the artist and for the spectator. This mediation can take many forms, from art works in various mediums and materials, to a dialogue with someone on a street corner, to sharing skills and knowledge with students and practitioners alike. At the heart of discourse is the act of questioning and at the heart of sculpture is the questioning of position, or rather, to be in a position of questioning. Sculpture is by definition public and therefore, in its best form, embodies sharing and public discourse, opening one up to other perspectives as well as prompting us to question our own positions in relation to ourselves and to the world around us. I have been lucky enough to experience these both as a student and a teacher myself and look forward to contributing to a culture of discourse in various forms in my own practice as well as in teaching.

I come from a varied background from dance, music, and art, to film and performance, yet all of it can be summed up in my practice as working at the intersection of image, sound, and body, and with that, its embodiment in interdisciplinary sculpture. Much of my interdisciplinary and sound sculptural works include an interactive element which interfaces technology, materiality, and space such as my copper sound sculptures (copper sculptures with aural exciters attached through which sound resonates—the voicing of a body) and expanded installations where the spectator’s movements in the gallery space become participatory in the work itself. Each work aims to unfix and itself remains ever in flux, bringing to attention each spectator’s inevitable framing of the work.

My own evolution involves continuing to look for more efficient methodologies and forms within which to open spaces for discourse today, and that means investigating (from this grounded sculptural position of questioning) contemporary forms of media and inter-action as well as reaching into and across various cultural pockets, seeking, and participating in a form of what Beuys called social sculpture.

My approach to teaching, like that of my work, can perhaps be summed up best by this quote from Adorno on the composer Alban Berg: “…to heighten the illusion to the point of transparency.” In addition to a classroom setting at the Conservatory, one-on-one classes offer the opportunity for me to become attuned to each student’s position, trajectory, and authenticity so as to be able to offer individualized support and guidance both in the realm of conceptual armature as well as in the physical relationship with their chosen materials.

I believe that lesson plans can and should be created with the student and can retain flexibility to accommodate a student's intuitive path, working both in supporting their own projects as well as suggested areas of exploration that would help contribute to growth and create an inspired setting for each student. As such, the first lesson would begin with an introduction and discussion to get to know them and their needs through which we can together create a semi-structured plan before diving into the lesson itself.

I am grounded in a deep love (and healthy questioning) of language, which to me is one of the primary materials at this intersection of image, sound, and body. Our language (including its inabilities and inefficiencies) provides the strongest sparks for me that instigate a line of questioning which eventually result in a work, a material trace of immaterial processes. This in itself leaves a trace that, like our verbal dialogue in the day to day, is temporal, that disappears but whose shadow lingers and from time to time prompts us to excavate our positions, to look up at the sculptural forms that have been cemented in our public squares—systemic pillars that frame our thoughts—and reposition ourselves in relation to them.