Statement of Work and Research

Through my work composed primarily of photographs, performance, and video art, I work to revise the exclusionary historical landscape of science and exploration. My artistic practice draws from my first-hand experience working for the Space Program as a photographer for NASA from 2004 to 2015. I accumulated understanding of the Program’s science pedagogy and PR methodology. This informs my exploration of: Utopic space (and historic failures of utopia), human rights, Big Bang, birth, ecocatastrophe, photographic history, Space exploration, and the extraterrestrial.

My research orbits around people and events which are omitted from popularized narratives of science and discovery. Including the lesser known herstorys: Mercury 13 Pilots Jerrie Cobb and Janey Hart’s unsuccessful call for gender diversity in Space Flight in 1962, and in discovering that Sally Ride is the only known queer Astronaut to date and how this information came to light in the obituary notice announcing her death in 2012. My exhibitions and performances create space and opportunities for conversations and discourse development around re-visioning history. I perform in public locations, enacting gestural shifts to common, expected, or even suggested demographics or behaviors. Similarly, my lens-based work employs lighting, optical effects, or durational changes to demonstrate a contrast between the aesthetics and functionality of consumer objects. Spectacle in my work is counter-balanced with humor and gestures of futility by (over)extending the corporeal body, using of props and costumes, and demonstrating the inadequacies of consumer objects.