Thesis Work

Every piece I create becomes a reflection of my body's limits, a visceral documentation of what it means to occupy flesh that absorbs impact, endures rupture, and carries memory long after the moment has passed. I explore the raw intensity of both physical and emotional sensation by utilizing my own body as subject and by pushing myself into the edges of experience, channeling pain and pleasure, tension and release. Working with a variety of mediums, from ceramics to oil paint to overglaze and even body-adjacent materials, I approach each piece with a desire to manipulate and convey what is unseen within these deeply personal sensations.

The hardware nail gives me language to speak about the body without depicting it, to examine its vulnerabilities through fragments rather than full forms; they form a rhythmic field that are at once hard and delicate, painful and intimate. The process of shaping each nail became a form of respite during an abrupt, disorienting breakup - an experience that split open the emotional and sensory terrain I often explore. Repetition offered steadiness, and the quiet rhythm of sculpting allowed me to redirect the intensity of grief into material form. The nails hold this duality: they echo tools meant to pierce or bind, yet their surfaces are rendered with a softness that resists violence. In their accumulation, they mirror the way emotional experience can overwhelm, sharpen, or numb. Alongside the nails, bio-leathers with surfaces uncannily similar to human skin stand in for the body as something both intimate and estranged holding traces of care, longing, and discomfort. Utilizing controlled gestures and the disciplined act of repetition, I investigate how the body processes rupture, how love persists through loss, and how memory settles into material.