As this year comes to a close, I am already starting to plan for next year… Goals are going from loose ideas to more concrete steps. This is important to me, as I get older, because so often I feel like showing work can be more like a panic response than a carefully planned moment. Get asked to be in a show. Make work. Get it out the door. Repeat. There sometimes isn’t enough time to complete the thought as I’d like to, or to get as weird as I’d like to, and there certainly isn’t any continuity and/or planning for the future if every piece is a response to someone else’s idea. So I’m working on trying to be more active in the actual trajectory of my career. Because a succession of shows isn’t a career in my mind. I’d rather create work from a place that is intentional rather than reactive. Some things that are important to me are: getting into higher profile shows, with certain respected organizations and museums; still creating a series of affordable work that can reach a larger audience that I offer directly; creating bodies of work that are comprehensive both conceptually and physically…my ideas are only getting weirder and I don’t know that my work is always going to be suited for spaces offering more traditional “this hangs on a wall and fits in a box” type shows. I want to be able to take risks and have that supported. I guess seeing the Scott Kip show recently made me realize that I want to be making some work that isn’t necessarily suited to a traditional commercial space. With my job, I have much less time available to make work, so I’d like to make the most of it.
I am thankful for all the opportunities that have been made available to me so far in my life and am hugely grateful for the people and the spaces that have shown my work. Growth is hard because it feels like a rejection of the past, when, for me, it’s more something that is built upon all that I’ve ever done. I’ve always had this streak of wanting to do more/wanting to do something different…it’s just growing and I feel like I have to honor that moving forward. Stay tuned and see how that goes….
Upcoming Exhibitions
In Shadow, Brassworks Gallery, Portland, OR - March 2025
subject/matr/mother, Carbondale Arts, Carbondale, CO - April 2025
5 into 1 Anniversary Exhibition, Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, PA - Summer 2025
Solo show, HUB-Robeson Galleries, Penn State University, University Park, PA - May-August 2026
Work in Progress
I finished most of what I had hoped to for this year and did start that larger piece. I will post progress on it tomorrow.
Upcoming Miscellany
I will work on that Second’s Sale, for real. I think.