Chronicling my successes and failures in love, my work is confessional and autobiographical; focusing on my experiences of love, sex, connection, and intimacy in the context of both queer digital and physical encounters, and the pursuit of relationships obstructed by a chronically diseased body. This virtual frontier of love invites us to rethink intimacy and embrace vulnerability in a landscape of seemingly infinite detachment and potential. As we navigate and stumble through two worlds simultaneously, digital and physical, we mustn't abandon this understanding that in the core of our being, we yearn for authentic encounters, be them digital or tactile.
Entwining the digital, emotional, and the tangible through hand built ceramic sculpture is my testament to the radical power of vulnerability, connection, and love in an increasingly digital world. These ceramics become a sort of record and memorial to these intimate queer experiences, turning the intangible or ephemeral into something that will far outlive the fleeting emotions they embody—something that might otherwise dissipate amongst the 1’s and 0’s of the digital ether. It’s an opportunity to celebrate all the complexities and nuances of contemporary queer relationships, and even more so it’s an invitation for others to embrace authenticity and navigate the blurred boundaries between the virtual and the real.
It is through this visual queer storytelling that I celebrate, critique, wonder, and wallow in a sea of narrative—overwhelmed and pacified by an overabundance of choice. There are not just other fish in the sea, but rather too many fish in an ocean too big for us to even make sense of. It is within this ambivalence and playfulness that we uncover the potential to reimagine love, intimacy, and queerness, transcending the binaries that confine us and embracing the enigma of our shared human experience.
From working hands into wet clay, the very same hands that held and caressed a particular lover or exchanged intimate text messages, I imbue emotional immediacy directly through touch into each porcelain vessel. It’s an emotional-spiritual transfer that externalizes the internal, and leaves me with a blossoming heart, ready to love again and again!
So as we navigate these parallel worlds, one truth remains constant: our deepest yearning for genuine connections, whether they materialize through digital interfaces or the tender touch of another.