Artist Statement
As a fourth generation local to the coastline of the Florida Panhandle, the Gulf of Mexico is a great and constant driver in my work. My thematic influences are honed from my knowledge of the Gulf that was taught to me by generations of my family and expanded through my experiences on the water. Coastal family traditions such as learning to throw a handheld fishing net, is one way I bridge my connection with the familiar coastline and shallow waters. Viewing the makeup of the seafloor through nautical charts, bathymetry maps, and underwater sonar screens incites my fascination with the imperceptible depths of the Gulf.
Shallow and deep water explorations provide profoundly different experiences, from which I correlate personal and poetic metaphors. Shallow water is personal, visible, and familiar whereas deep water is distant, unseen, and imagined. I explore ways to reflect the coastline’s familiarity as well as the obscurity of deep water through installations and sculptural methods using ceramic, fiber, drawing, and unfired clay. Obscure, glazed ceramic forms describe an imagined topography of the unseen seafloor and handmade fabric netting lightly dips and sways along ceaseless currents. My work intuitively responds to the contrasting experiences that are associated with the shallow waters of the coastline and the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.