What and Why

I make art works (mostly sculpture, but also installations, photography, and jewelry) that incorporate and contemplate the material world around us - how humankind inhabits and examines our planet. I choose to work with recycled and found materials because they reflect the substance of our everyday lives - what we shed or discard that once was part of our daily lives.

I create interactive projects and installations that ask audiences to contemplate how they inhabit their world, either through Weigh Your Words, an examination of identity through interaction with words on stones, or through Bycatch, a series of large sculptures that serve as portraits of coastal communities threatened by rising waters due to climate change. The Bycatch project also includes a series of photographs of collages of beach detritus - snapshots of a littered beach rearranged into a reflection on the affected human or marine communities through which the garbage is passing.

In a related series of sculptures (mostly birds), I transform used "everyday" materials such as toilet paper rolls and packaging papers (wrappers, packets, newspaper) into quirky examinations of what our culture values and what it discards. 

This website showcases my work with common materials, including a blog about ongoing projects and short-term explorations. There is a gallery of many of the birds I have made in the Recycled Bird series, as well as a shop with birds currently available for sale.

I keep an Instagram account (@materialworldstudio) to complement this site - posting images of vignettes and scenes related to this work, as well as notices about exhibitions and events. The most recent feed from that account is posted below. 

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