10.28.2025

The Relational Component of Forms

I think I am now starting to understand what I can learn from working with abstract forms. Since seeing how my perception is affected by the environment in which an abstract form resides, I am slowly recognizing that there are other components that can alter how we perceive abstracted forms. After building a second form, it uncovered the component of a form’s relationship to another form. Just as the surrounding environment can evoke different feelings, the interaction between two forms reveals new perceptual responses.

I suspect for many of us, we create stories to attempt into understand abstract art. Playing with the position of these two forms, I notice how I created different narratives for the two forms dependent on their spatial relationship. My perception of the forms individually as well as a collective felt to provide different stories with every configuration. This suggests that the relational component of the forms we are surrounded by can evoke different feelings and stories based on their proximity and orientation to each other. I find it intriguing that these perceptual shifts can happen without altering the physical form itself and can shift with the simplest adjustment like the distance between two forms.

10.24.2025

Environmentally-Influenced Perception of Forms

I am always surprised with how building something based from a sketch starts to legitimize its reason to exist. Acknowledging that made me attentive to the way my perception of a form can change within the environments it resides. Which launched me into this quick experiment of photographing this form within different rooms of my house.

Having a design background, I can’t knock the desire of wanting to create things that come with a function. Through this experiment it brought two things into view. One the context a room provides through it’s function and purpose influences the way we perceive an object that resides within it. Two, through that adjusted perception we assume or attempt to understand the function and purpose of said object. When looking at this form sitting on my workbench the tools surrounding it made it evoke a vulnerable and ‘bottom-of-the-food-chain’ feeling. The form being surrounded by the very tools that brought into existence also threaten it. When placing the form on a dresser in my bedroom, those feelings were no longer present. Pivoting from this, the environmental context of a room also effects what we perceive the function to be. This something I hope to spend more time with but I’m curious to on how one might imply a function to an abstract form dictating it using the context the environment provides.

10.18.2025

Feeling Lost

To tee things up. Art is hella strange. And studying art is maybe even stranger. It teeter totters between realms of subjectivity and objectivity. Or perhaps, art is subjectively conceived and then objectively presented and defended, in turn making it more legitimate for some and more obscure for others. Even only a couple sentences I suspect I may have lost some folks. Lately, the feeling of lost constantly arrives whenever I dive into reading, writing, or art-making for school. Feeling lost was one of the main motives for wanting to do an MFA, but funny enough so far within my program it has pretty much amplified this feeling. Fortunately though with the endless opportunities that school has allowed me to feel lost; I do have a new perspective on it. Before, I looked to minimize this feeling or even eradicate it. But after many conversations with faculty and friends it is very clear that this feeling ain’t going no where. As I think about the abstract forms I am currently exploring, it helps me to articulate my current perspective on feeling lost. The abstraction of these forms are only abstract because they don’t provide any contextual clues of what they are or what they may do. Being someone interested in functional objects like furniture, this has been difficult for me to allow myself permission to sketch ideas with no plan or purpose in mind. Once I did lean into that separation of form and function, these forms felt to evolve in a way that reflected things that simply felt right to me. Rather than processing ideas mentally, allowing iterative sketching to be a method of non-mental thinking through the use of immediate-instinctual actions. I still hope to determine what these forms are but not being able to explain them and trusting my instincts completely reframes the way I see ‘feeling lost’. There are universal connotations that come with that word. Directionless, fear, being unsettled, and confusion. But seeing how these abstract forms aren’t based on of my current understanding of how forms are formed; there is no reason on why we have to define the feeling of lost with its current connotations. Feeling lost can also have connotations of being curious, moments to exploration, and an invitation for instinctual action. Especially if art is an act of expression, feeling lost is asking you to make moves that just feel right and need no justification. I find that this perspective of feeling lost illustrates the complicated duality of art-making. That making art can be fun but can also be incredibly frustrating. Making art can help you find yourself and also isolates a version of you that feels unrecognizable. Making art instinctually will feel like I’m riding the struggle bus to Timbuktu but with every bump in the road, its confirmation I am moving forward.

10.16.2025

Sketching to Think

To be completely honest, I don't know what these are or what they may become. But a professor recently helped me recognized the amount of thinking I do within verbal language. This one-way expression of thought has restricted the way I artistically process ideas. Stripping myself from this thinking habit as been a difficult task to say the least. Shoutout to my cohort buddies who has discussed this with me many times. But yet, ironically, within the endeavor of wanting to understand this practice, that in it of itself has been trying to put it to language. This paradox could give some context on why artists may be hard to understand at first. Their work may be a product of way of processing information that isn’t anchored within conventional communication methods. In attempt to embrace this non-verbal way of thinking these forms are things that attract me, make me curious and currently exist in a state that I can seek to understand through sketching even without fully knowing what they are or what they may do. Yet since I can’t help myself in wanting to provide a verbal description of this practice, the quote below is from a book I am reading and I think does a pretty good job.

10.13.2025

An object’s becoming.

There is a special connection between a made object it it’s maker. I felt this when making an object based on something I had sketched variations of for several days. During the process of taking it from sketch to cutting, shaping, and glueing up oak plants it my connection to it started to shift. As I sanded it, I thought about the conception phase within the start of the object’s life. When sketching it, it felt to be silly, quirky, something I didn’t know if I should spend the time making or not. But as I worked up to the fine grits the object felt like it’s “something quality” became more legitimate and validated and justified. It had some sense of becoming.

06.06.2025

“Good enough for who it’s for.”

"It's good enough for who it's for."

I heard this saying many times in 2020 as my father-in-law and I converted an old corn crib into a residence for my brother-in-law. Back then, it was an acknowledgment of our half-assed knowledge and gutsy actions as we tackled the various problems throughout the building process. Today, just a year after losing him, one of the biggest influences in my life and creative practice, I find myself repeating that phrase over and over again.

This saying not only showed his funny way of accepting the step we'd just finished, but it represented his servant's heart. We weren't professional house framers or window installers, nor did we have the proper tools for the cleanest outcomes. Still, we approached it with our best effort and, more importantly, for the benefit of someone else. Thank you for everything you taught me and continue to teach me. It's truly a gift to reflect on the things we talked and joked about during that project, and realize they have a much deeper meaning today. Love and miss you dearly.

12.16.2023

“Motivational” Lines

- Dreams are like farts. They come and go but a turd is something you can hold on to.
- Life is like chips and salsa, the minute you dip your dry crusty ass in spices, it gets much better.
- Pace yourself. Snails are quicker than dead zebras.