There is something deliciously haphazard about human experience. Day to day, we operate on the assumption that the world is as we perceive it, that each one of us is a discrete entity with clear boundaries between our ‘self’ and the environment. Nevertheless, with only brief investigations we know that these notions cannot be true. Our senses are inexpert and limited. The nerves that carry information to our brains are sluggish and prone to err. Once data reaches our mind it is interpreted through personal and cultural filters before finally being, we hope, understood. Each of us exists, as it were, in a sort of isolated bubble of subjective perceptions. We must constantly reconcile this personal reality with that of others. 

To say that human experience is subjective is a simple enough argument, but where does the subject exist, and what sort of line separates the individual from the rest of the world? We have built our environments; we have created tools for a million tasks. All of these things are essentially extensions of the body. But besides the obvious biological factors, there is little difference between the pen and the hand that wields it. We do not control our bodies so much as we negotiate with them. They breathe and circulate blood, they digest food and heal wounds. They develop and decay over time while we do little more than watch. The body, though usually considered part of the self, could just as well be seen as external, a tool which extends the individual into the surrounding world much like a house, a car, a telephone.

My work is about this hazy middle ground between a being and the world. It is about the wonderful awkwardness of the body and our constant attempts to know something ‘true’ or to feel something ‘real.’ There can ultimately be no resolution to these desires, but the passionate conviction with which so many of us face our daily tasks is, to me, inspiring. The cultures and paradigms we cobble together, as groups and as individuals, are so hopeful yet so tenuous; it is difficult not to marvel both at our genius and our naïveté. The goal of my sculptures is to offer people an experience which illustrates this paradox of human life.