A Battle of Saints and Clowns

Existing as points between impoverished rural landscapes and religious zealot behaviors lay both my history as a young child and a morbid fetishization of Christianity. In the beginning, days that were once filled with naive worship quickly transformed into an anxious self-consciousness and a subsequent loss of faith. Religious extremes, patriarchal hierarchies, and militant-inspired worship confused and disturbed a certain level of psyche that bore deep wounds. After much work and acceptance, I began a journey of independent research consisting of interviews, writing, and photographing contemporary Christian subcultures and congregations within Evangelist, Pentecostal, and Baptist communities.

As a reflection of this study, paintings and collages are created primarily with the concern of reclaiming memory and space through twisting religious canon and iconography. While much religious discourse in the arts is concerned with expressing aspects of spiritual universality or collective thought, I instead allowed myself the opportunity as an individual to explore relationships between social justice and spirituality through personal anecdotes. Sometimes with the aid of additional historical and mythical elements, moments of situational clarity are inserted before being distorted again through a series of fragmentations. Using these stories and images taken of protests and candlelight vigils, I began trying to understand my memories of childhood and the amalgams of patriarchy and power in contemporary landscapes.

Each of these creations, whether it be collage, sculpture, or installation, collect separate images or themes as an aggregate, coexisting within the same space. Generally, the figures included function as protagonists and stage props speaking to the background and expressing various ranges of emotion from fear to disassociation to epiphany. Some religious and cultural narratives I use include pain and pleasure; struggle and reward; women and power (or lack thereof); light, submission, duty, and patience (waiting).