I am a visual artist based in Ohio, with a creative process deeply rooted in the exploration and manipulation of materials.

I’ve always had widely diverse interests when it comes to art making. My mother, who was an art teacher, always encouraged me to draw connections between creativity and play. Her work always inspired me, as did her career as an educator. In 2005, I began down my own path in the field of art education.

In 2009, I graduated with my bachelor of art ed. and began teaching K-8th grade art. Over my 13-year career in education, I worked simultaneously in both public and private schools. During this time, I also founded a summer program, with a vision to bring talented professionals together with my creatively eager students. For 7 years I led the program and its growth as it evolved into a team of skilled instructors working with hundreds of students.

In 2017, I decided to pursue a master of fine arts degree and I applied to graduate school. Throughout this time, I immersed myself into research and discovering other artists whose work heavily focused on materials and formal elements of texture, color, value, shape, form, line, space. My work evolved towards installation art & mixed media sculptures. My strong interest in materials paved the way for creative play to guide my method of working. Exploring, scavenging, and collecting were no longer just hobbies. These acts became an essential part of my creative process, bridging the gap between my studio practice and daily life.

In the spring of 2020, I graduated with my MFA at the same time that the pandemic began and the world shut down. For months I was without access to my art studio and many of my materials. As a result, I began simplifying my creative process by limiting materials and working on a smaller scale. I also began taking pictures as form of visual journal and time reference. Photo journaling became a way for me to continue collecting objects, colors, patterns, and textures.

My father also had a strong influence on my work from a young age. He gave me my first woodburning tools when I was young, which led me to explore pyrography. Just before applying to graduate school, I started experimenting with burning onto bones and animal skulls. I quickly fell in love with the rich tones and glossy effect that the burning had on these surfaces. Pyrography is an ancient art that uses heat as the medium. The term can be translated to "drawing with fire", from the Greek pyr (fire) and graphos (writing or drawing). Pyrography is a unique process that neither adds nor removes material, like many other artistic processes. Instead, it chemically alters the material surface, producing varying tones of sepia through the application of heat. This transformation causes the artwork and burning surface to be united as one. I often think of it as similar to tattooing or branding. In a way, this process gives a decorative skin back to the animal.

My ongoing pyrography work is an exploration of using heat as a drawing tool. I create form-responsive artwork on a variety of surfaces, with bone being my primary canvas. Both purchased skulls and those found with animal remains play a role in my studio practice, along with the complex cleaning process that accompanies working with them. In the end, the materials involved are simple and natural: just heat and bone. My overarching love for materials has cultivated my many creative interests. This has led me to a life of collecting, scavenging, and finding beauty in many things.

All of my skulls are carefully selected and ethically sourced. No animals are ever harmed for the purpose of my art.

Teaching

For over a decade I have worked as an art educator. I have had the unique privilege of providing the first art class experiences for young learners in kindergarten, and supporting those same students all the way through eighth grade. My teaching experiences span into high school and college art as well. To learn more about my professional experience as an art educator and view samples of student work, click the button below.