Something ‘bout Youth, 2018
After exploring the life and death of my father I felt I was ready to address my experiences of growing up in a home where I witnessed domestic abuse, both physical and mental, as well as watching both my parents struggle with alcoholism. Somethin Bout Youth is an exploration of the abuse that I witnessed from age 14 when my father relapsed, up until his death that occurred when I was just 19 years old. This series is a deeply personal and raw reflection of my experiences as a teenager. Though I was surrounded by abuse and addiction, I also wanted to address that at their core, both of my parents were good people who loved their children and each other deeply. Growing up in a home where we had a household income of less than $30,000, my parents showed my siblings and I how to appreciate and value the little things in life. This series shows the complicated relationship that families endure in the face of addiction.
Rehab Part II, 2018
Completed in 2017, Rehab pt.II is a collection of 28 inlayed porcelain cans which further explored the life and death of my father. Each can holds a journal entry that he completed while rehab-these entries reflected on a time when he drank, why he did so, and how it made him feel. Each can was individually casted, and hand crushed. During the inlay process I replicated my father's handwriting as close as possible, which created a very intimate experience where I felt as though my father was speaking through me to share his story. Though he battled with alcoholism for much of his life, I did not want him to be defined by his disease. The completion of this series gave me closure around his addiction and his death and allowed me to look at his life with compassion, understanding and love.
Rehab Part I, 2016
In 2014 my father passed away due to organ failure caused by his severe alcoholism. Roughly two years after his passing, I realized that in order to process and cope with his death, I needed to take on the task of facing his life-which included his addiction head on. Rehab pt.I is the first collection of two which began to explore the documentation that my father wrote down while in Rehab in 2010. Within these writings that he left behind was a timeline of his life, which included his first drink, his first marriage and divorce, his second marriage to my mother, various jobs he held, as well the birth of all of his children. Also inlayed into this series, you will find the serenity prayer; a prayer often said in Rehabilitation programs, as well as a letter that my dad wrote to me which we found after his passing. My father was an avid outdoorsman and in order to honor that piece of him, I created the antler form to hold these moments. While this series intention was to cope with his passing, I found that part of what was so healing in this process was that I had found a way to honor his life beyond his addiction. This concept carried over for the next year as I created Rehab pt.II.