Note from artist:

My mom divorced my father when I was eleven. I went to a speech therapist the year after. She told my mom I hardly spoke and wouldn’t say more than I had to: mostly yes and no answers. “Your son doesn’t speak much,” she said, “so his speech is lazy”. I suppose my survival tactic in a tumultuous household was silence. If I couldn’t be heard I wouldn’t be seen. Instead I turned to music. This became my voice and my interpreter. I could express myself, without needing to say a word. A few years later I found photography and film, which became an extension of my eyes. And several years after that I found carpentry, which became an extension of my body and my hands.

Today I do not have trouble with speech. In fact, I have taken great pains to refine my diction and overcome the discomfort of expressing my opinion. That said, I still use music, carpentry, photography, and film as extensions of myself, to communicate things I have found difficult to say. I use these extensions as limbs, to reach outside of myself, to find some kind of truth. But maybe nothing is true. Or what’s true is changing. Or maybe truth is simply found in the act of reaching.

A palmist read my hand when I was twenty. She told me I was a chameleon. If unchecked, this could be a dangerous trait, she said. One can lose their identity when they continually adapt to their surroundings. My art is a means to curb this and not lose myself. I try, I fail, I pull and I expand. I throw and something sticks, and it feels perfect. But the feeling is fleeting. And so I throw again, repeatedly, until something else happens. It can be aggravating and exhausting. But when I don’t make art, I feel anxious and alone. I become the unchecked chameleon, forgetting whom I am, disappearing into the world. I become my eleven-year-old-self – isolated.   

So I make art. It’s messy, but it’s necessary. Without it I’m lost. My work has allowed me to reach outside and try to find something true. And if I’m lucky, my reaching may extend out and touch someone else, and speak to their loneliness.