I am an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and dominatrix working across sculpture, performance, and pedagogy. I am most interested in art as a tool for social change and liberation. My studio work combines the visual languages of kink, pop-culture, and design to explore and subvert US American myths, narratives, and representations of disabled and femme identities. My performance practice incorporates a focus on kink as care, role-playing, consent, and embodied communication. Most of my performance work is conducted via my alternate persona, The Art Dominatrix, who offers 1:1 and group creative un-blocking sessions, collaborative transformative rituals, and creative consulting.
My work has been exhibited at venues such as the Denver Art Museum, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, the Torrance Art Museum, the Momentary, Highways Performance Space, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Contemporary Art. I currently live and work between the Central Coast and Los Angeles where I am an Associate Professor of Art and Design at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and a curator at Monte Vista Projects.
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Or, much of my very first artist statement, which I have been told to delete, still applies:
When I was ten I saw a dead guy on the side of the road on the way home from an Oriole's game. He flew through the windshield of a blue Toyota pick-up. Due to the accident we were stuck in unmoving traffic. As we approached the wreck, Jennifer Diling's dad said not to look. Our car sat next to the body for at least twenty minutes. The other kids in the car did not look. I am still looking.
Sometimes I cannot help but stare. I kept the pictures of my high school best friend. She is the sexiest person that I have ever met. I want to see more. I want to show you her mannerisms to make you want to look too. I want to create a point of departure and then hand it to you. I made this for you.
In a society where we spend much of our time in capsules traveling from capsule to capsule, I have realized that most of my art belongs somewhere between the capsules- a special delivery for you during your long day, should you choose to accept. These insertions into the everyday have taken the form of a mobile spa vending machine, a pirate waitressing performance, and unsolicited janitorial services with a twist, to name a few. In the spirit of stimulating community dialogue through play, my recent gallery work takes the form of large-scale interactive installation, games, collaborations with community members, workshops, and interactive performances. Each piece is designed to be accessible and interesting to a public without an art background, with layers that engage in conversation with contemporary art and art theory.
Here are some questions that I ask myself in consideration of my work:
Does it look like Art (if so, start over)? Is it interactive? Does it start a conversation? Is it accessible? Am I part of the problem or part of the solution? What are my motives? Is it courageous? Is it humorous? Is it honest? Is it innovative? Is it revolutionary? Do I hear the sound of it clicking into place?