Mahalo

My artwork tends to use things that circulate through my everyday life in Hawai‘i: slippers, grocery bags, takeout containers, cardboard Amazon boxes——habits and experiences, too. I like to collect, alter, and rearrange. Some materials I document in drawings; others I cut, paint, or reframe until they take on a different kind of weight. I’m attracted to objects and actions that aren’t meant to last, things that hold, carry, or pass through, but that still leave a trace.

I get lost in the layers of Honolulu, of neighborhoods and communities, of the humor and pressures of local life, of the long shadow of tourism and military occupation. My work is experimental and unsure. I work toward forms that feel mixed up and unstable, and I present artworks that give me pause or pose a problem. I feel a sense of truth when it’s hard to separate celebration from criticism.

I’m a haole, a southerner from Appalachia, and a contemporary person alienated from a clear sense of ancestral origin or roots, which might be why contradictions feel like belonging to me.

I’m fascinated by Arte Povera and Tropicália. Andy Warhol’s influence is behind my work, too, with his way of turning the everyday into something sharp, strange, or beautiful.

I was previously active as an artist during the early 2000s contemporary art boom, exhibiting in the U.S. and internationally, with shows at places like the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, The Putting Lot in Brooklyn, and HMK in the Netherlands. My work was supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center, and the Forward Arts Foundation. Reviews of my shows appeared in publications like The Village Voice, Circa, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and The Irish Times. My pieces are held in collections including the High Museum of Art, the National University of Ireland, and MOCA Georgia.

After moving to Hawai‘i in 2015, I gave up on art for a long time. Eventually, I started making new work, but I did not show anything publicly until 2025: this website.