Revised Artist Statement, colored pencil on paper, 9 x 12 in., 2010

Dr. Phil. The DIY Channel. Extreme makeovers. Psychic hotlines. More than ever, it feels as if the path to happiness demands reinvention, renovation and outright transformation.

I'm interested in the machinery behind the constant imperatives to improve ourselves, and I'm especially fascinated by the ways identity and consumption have become so entangled. What happens when regular Joes speak unironically about their brands? When did the word "guru" come to mean any person with cookware and a diet plan to shill? How do these trends affect our ideas about authenticity?

I approach space and form in psychological and emotional terms, and my work investigates the complex and often invisible processes by which we construct personality. Informed by topics ranging from Freud's influence on modern-day public relations to classics of the self-help genre to media theory, I make objects and images that expose the imperfect and the ridiculous, even as they aspire to seduce through color, texture and surface.

I think of my practice as language-based in that I'm using a vocabulary of materials to reflect back coded cultural messages. Like a puzzle or a game, I reshuffle various parts into new and different meanings. I find value in the confusion of looking at something that has its own logic but that makes no sense. Absurdity can be a relief.