Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

Through sculpture, my work examines the history of optical devices to investigate the role of light in contemporary visual culture. Looking to Napoleonic France, where the modern lighthouse lens was invented, as well as various moments in the history of scientific photography, my projects play with luminescence and transparency to position vision, optics, and perception as historically-altered experiences.

While At Headlands

While at Headlands, I will conduct research into these themes (vision and perception), thinking perhaps about what the materiality of light feels like, how to exist within a theater of optics, or what the speech patterns of fireworks might be. I will make spine pads and pith bandages to ward off the sun and pay visits to the nearby Point Bonita beacon to observe the fresnel lens. And by the end of my time, I hope to see my work differently than I did at the beginning.