My artworks are internal explorations of the postindustrial midwestern psyche - reveries of self, encompassed in the degraded influences of the past and the rusted landscape of the present. 

As influences are passed through people and generations, they inevitably deform, the original idea changed and distorted after repeated transmissions – a ruin of what they once were. These compositions confront the ongoing conflict between these legacies of influence and self, a reconciliation of my shifting identity within the post-industrial ruins that surround me and the cultural ruins that form me.

In the work, past and present collide, creating anxious layered ruminations on these ruins and their effects. These conglomerations dogpile imagery from my life and upbringing in postindustrial Michigan - plastics manufacturing plants, automotive racetracks, pull-barn garages, and yesterday’s signage covering the work like faded tattoos on the neighborhood mechanic. They become a half-point of consciousness between the parallel crumbling influences and the degrading environment around us.

Exploring these depictions of internal past and present, I find it inevitable that the here-and-now blends with then-and-there that I am reflecting upon. An ongoing dialogue with the ideas of a bygone past I never knew – nostalgic reflections on the Fordist boom and it’s monolithic machines of lore. Cursive name plates, ripped from the steel bodies of yesterday’s bumpers, loom over the work and present.

I heap layers of impressions onto the works themselves, their meanings and origins become lost as they are stacked and passed to viewers. These elements are varied in form, as interconnected and disparate as our lives and formations, a crisp silkscreened photograph, a loose aggressive brush mark, a splatter of paint, a parking ticket hanging from the canvas. 

Often combining eras and objects, the artworks create a separation between moments of thought, chaos and calm simultaneously existing within self during reflection. Varying from quiet and tenderly rendered depictions to assemblage exploding into our world, the works reflect the varied state involved in introspective analysis – at times anxious and convoluted, others calm, clear and contained.

The importance of these works is not in the elements themselves but their union - the importance is in the mass and the mess.