Opposites anchor my practice – stone and found objects, presence and absence, the labored and the effortless. The tension that emerges when a painstakingly carved element meets an everyday object mirrors extremes and inconsistencies I've encountered throughout my life. Rich subject matter lives in these stutter steps.

Stone carving came to me intuitively. At twenty-three, with my first marble sculpture, a capacity revealed itself that I didn't know I had. Ignorance worked in my favor: I didn't know enough to know I couldn't do it, so I did. The process remains deeply intuitive, a slow peeling away of everything that blocks the final form. Working by feel as much as by sight, I let the stone guide the chisel. My hands check each contour, my own body serves as reference. For that first piece, I made the form in oil-based clay over and over in the sweltering New Orleans summer – the heat kept melting it – until the model lived in my memory and my hands.

Carving is physically demanding and achingly slow. It's boring, in the way deep focus can be boring – a meditative dance where the stone always leads. Yet the result, when it arrives, feels nothing short of miraculous. Like birth: an unpleasant process that yields something extraordinary.

Much of my work addresses mental health and the struggle to be present in the world. For years, severe anxiety made reading nearly impossible – I'd stare at pages, time ticking, unable to comprehend. That experience informs pieces like So to Speak, where a heavy chunk of West Rutland grey marble sits on a vintage writing desk, the surface empty, weighted with expectation and inability. Recent loss has deepened my practice. My best friend's death ignited an urgency – a fire that refuses to let me play small anymore.

The work – assemblages, figurative pieces, constructions from recycled materials, public sculptures – invites viewers to think and feel something, even if what surfaces is discomfort or curiosity. My practice explores being ill at ease in the world, the discovery of the unexpected. Choices are deliberately non-obvious, pairing elements in ways that create space for individual interpretation rather than prescribed meaning.

What does this idea need to be communicated most effectively? That question drives every material choice, every formal decision. My practice has a broad aesthetic range – people say my work looks like it comes from different artists – but this is a strength. Different ideas require different forms. The through-line remains intention, craft, and a commitment to making work that belongs to everyone, even though it can only be made by me.