In my work, I utilize media as varied as clay, concrete, food and video to create works that can be touched, eaten, heard and sometimes even broken or dissolved. These works invite those who encounter them to reflect on the realities of time, value, and labor; of vulnerability and impermanence; and of reward and sacrifice. The art is rooted firmly in direct personal experience: the bone-rattling sound of porcelain dominoes as they fall, the quiet beauty of a clay coin disintegrating in water, the sensation of wet porcelain underfoot, the exchange of participants' time and labor for my own. Through this range of activity, I encourage heightened awareness of the dynamics governing the most basic aspects of our lives, specifically the economics of human existence.

As collaborators in the activation of my installations, viewers have the opportunity to become complicit in the life story of the works. Viewing and handling, perhaps unmaking or breaking the works, visitors are given time and space to consider and assess the values of materials, their states and aesthetic forms, and the artistic labor required to produce them—each deciding for themselves what constitutes a valuable experience or exchange. 

Positing currency as a technology of trust, my present research examines our existing forms of currency and systems of exchange. It probes the increasing intangibility that characterizes our transactions with entities both personal and institutional, and it considers the effects of both prevailing systems and emerging technologies on the ways we value labor and distribute resources. Through participatory artworks developed via processes of ongoing research, generative dialogue and public iteration, I highlight and interrogate the salient economic issues of our time, namely wealth inequality, the minimum wage debate and the student debt crisis.