As an artist, I create objects that explore and extend bodily senses. I strive to understand how we experience our world and each other through touch, smell, and sound.
I am moving toward a practice that explores and extends the bodily organ most vital to craft, the hand. I am focusing on tools as an extension of the hand and the hand as an extension of sensory experience.
Listening Device was made in response to increasing echo chambers all around us. Echo chambers are environments in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own. Their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not considered. Meant to be held, this copper orb features 6 openings, each designed for speaking or listening. It can serve as an echo chamber itself for dialogue among peers or as a space where voices meet without truly connecting. The dynamic is entirely in the hands of the participants, choosing whether to engage in meaningful exchange, to speak past one another, to ruminate, or to share secrets. Listening Device has 2 hammer-sunk and bouged discs soldered together. The flares are hammer-formed discs soldered to the form. A sandblasted satin finish leaves the copper vulnerable to bear the marks of the speakers and listeners. The more it is used the richer the patina becomes.
Smelling Device allows a group of people to have the same sensory experience. It is a communal yet intimate encounter. A hollow hand-built glazed ceramic sphere with 7 spouts for 7 noses holds a piece of felt infused with bergamot, known for its health benefits including stress and anxiety relief. Also applied to the felt is Evil bone water, a Chinese herbal medicine known for its healing. Together the two aromas reminded the sniffers of a lemon candy smell, creating a unique olfactory experience. The felt can be refreshed or exchanged through a hole on the bottom which is closed off with a copper tension-fit plug. This device is doing more than just providing a shared encounter of a scent. You are sharing breath with others; breathing in oxytocin, pheromones, and perhaps the spirit of the person across from you. It can be wonderful, awkward, transformative, or creepy. No matter what connection happens.
Listening Device was made in response to increasing echo chambers all around us. Echo chambers are environments in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own. Their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not considered. Meant to be held, this copper orb features 6 openings, each designed for speaking or listening. It can serve as an echo chamber itself for dialogue among peers or as a space where voices meet without truly connecting. The dynamic is entirely in the hands of the participants, choosing whether to engage in meaningful exchange, to speak past one another, to ruminate, or to share secrets. Listening Device has 2 hammer-sunk and bouged discs soldered together. The flares are hammer-formed discs soldered to the form. A sandblasted satin finish leaves the copper vulnerable to bear the marks of the speakers and listeners. The more it is used the richer the patina becomes.
Smelling Device allows a group of people to have the same sensory experience. It is a communal yet intimate encounter. A hollow hand-built glazed ceramic sphere with 7 spouts for 7 noses holds a piece of felt infused with bergamot, known for its health benefits including stress and anxiety relief. Also applied to the felt is Evil bone water, a Chinese herbal medicine known for its healing. Together the two aromas reminded the sniffers of a lemon candy smell, creating a unique olfactory experience. The felt can be refreshed or exchanged through a hole on the bottom which is closed off with a copper tension-fit plug. This device is doing more than just providing a shared encounter of a scent. You are sharing breath with others; breathing in oxytocin, pheromones, and perhaps the spirit of the person across from you. It can be wonderful, awkward, transformative, or creepy. No matter what connection happens.