Grown-ups take themselves too seriously. I like to have fun. Fun is a vital and generative force in my artmaking practice. We are taught to drop our whimsical nature in favor of a profit- and production-based system that strips our creativity and imagination from us. Maturity, responsibility, and work rule the land, while whimsy and glee get tossed to the wayside. I use my artmaking practice to work against this system by calling on the power of play to disrupt neoliberal notions of work. Alongside contemporary art/art practices, I take inspiration from under-appreciated (and often dismissed) mediums such as comics/x and animation to help incorporate playful and whimsical ideas into the works. Everyday experiences are used to help construct new realities where silliness is reclaimed in contemporary artmaking; these new realities suggest that new worlds–and new systems–are possible and ripe for the taking.
I use drawing and ceramics to construct these playful worlds. These mediums encourage unrestrained making, allowing me to capture ideas and experiences instantaneously; this immediacy gives me the freedom to focus more on the idea/experience, instead of “correct” technique. Pencils, pens, markers, crayons, acrylic paint, clay, and digital tools are used in the process, and I find them vital to my artmaking. These tools help critique the idea that “unserious” materials cannot be used in fine art, legitimizing both playful art practices and the incorporation of play and silliness into the contemporary art world.