UC Riverside

My art practice begins with curiosities and playful improvisations, using sculpture, drawing, and painting. I create objects and scenes and photograph the tableaus in my studio. The studio and tabletop become a stage to make elaborate illusions that merge two-dimensional mark-making and crude constructions. These constructions sometimes also involve printed images that I use to build up a photographic space or backdrops for these still-lives. I’m interested in how light renders objects in space and how photography can compress space to force a perspective. I look towards shadow puppetry and theater on how props become more of a character for the stage. I show visibility on what is usually hidden in theater prop-making by allowing the process of making to be illuminated. I am more interested in evoking a feeling or sensation rather than something that is documentation or hyper-real. I see the camera as a way to tell a story.

For my thesis exhibition, I am presenting a series of images and photographic sculptures titled- Under the Bango Moon. This body of work is a culmination of the studio processes I have developed over the past few years while at UCR. This paper will lead you through my modalities of thinking regarding my image-making process, the curiosities that have inspired my gestures, and historical references.