Sometimes, if you bake a pie for an old man—nicknamed “Rusty” for his lack of access to running water and apparent aversion to it—you may be rewarded with a bizarre but presumably true story. I am inspired by stories like this one; stories that are potentially forbidden, seemingly private, and inherently foreign. Rusty is real. He lives in a very, very old two-story wooden house that is very…concave. He doesn’t have electricity, or water, and if you believe the standard haunted house trope, you would expect Rusty to run at you with a hatchet if you approached his house. While I seriously consider all of the heavy implications of a situation like Rusty’s, my defense mechanism is activated; I will likely allow myself to entertain the idea that he is actually coated in a fine layer of oxidation while I listen to his story.

The triad of a good story, a solid human truth, and the need to laugh are where I find the most inspiration. I enjoy questioning the makeup, the origin, the implications, and my own presuppositions of these scenarios.

I intend to portray openness and disarmament in the work that I make. Often, my work will take the form of puppetry or animation, or exude theatrical or carnivalesque visuals. My belief is that a certain expectation of innocence will allow for some indulgent humor while being presented with potentially difficult content. The narratives in my work are based on the stories I find, the social or political implications of these scenarios, insinuations, subtexts, a conditioned response or two, and hopefully some reflexive chuckles.