I am a multimedia artist primarily working in clay and painting. I make art to understand my own mental formation, present situations, and to speculate about the future. I’ve developed a personal code or pattern library that helps me spell out narratives and meaning in my artwork. These patterns come from real objects, universal signs, and abstracted shapes. By using certain patterns, I am referencing a location, posture, and time of life. Repetition brings clarity, it allows me to see better and encourages me to look closely. Referencing Mircea Eliade’s Myth of the Eternal Return, Kylan Rice states that “there is the timeless divine act of creation or foundation…repetition of this act is a way of redeeming time to timelessness and beginning again”. Patterns that reference past experiences add depth and continuity to bodies of work, and repeated use of a mark can transform the original idea into something new. Patterns hold the ability to flatten or conceal space, or give decorative skin or disguise. Repeating a mark can create visual harmony, directing the eye across space. In this way, I use pattern as a design element to control the viewer’s attention. These marks can be translated into different mediums using a variety of tools. I can create continuity in my work through patterns while exploring different mark-making techniques. I’ve used brushes, paint pens, sprig molds, clay stamps, spraying through stencils, and cut-out shapes. As my work progresses, I will likely develop more options for applying patterns to my work.
The painter Sangram Majumdar shared during an interview that “pattern can create familiarity which opens up the potential for other experiences”. A good example of this is a sticks and stones pattern I first created in 2022. I had recently moved across the country and started an artist residency in the desert. I wanted to start a new body of work by looking at the land. Feeling a little overwhelmed and not knowing where to start, I looked down and saw tiny broken twigs and rocks on red dirt. I took a photo and started making drawings. I developed the pattern from there. When I use this pattern, I am referencing beginnings, land mass, the desert, the foreground, and more. Sticks and stones became a reliable and meaningful camouflage that I started adding to my work. Since then, the pattern has changed to reference ideas of collection, holding space, and the act of noticing. Although the ideas behind my patterns are really known only by me, they direct the big ideas behind my work.
The origin photo of the sticks and stones pattern (featuring a harvest ant), 2022
An early version of the pattern in a drawing, 2022
Sticks and Stones pattern used in this 2023 painting, Void
A series of plaster pattern molds, 2025
