I have become a cutter. My work is cut and carved through, sanded down and wiped away. Since my first years in a drawing class my most favorite processes were those that took away from the paper to make shape, line, and contour. Now, I use my beloved X-Acto, my carving tools, and my eraser to create my work.

My work is simple and fragile. It is images of things recognizable. And while I am just about ready to move on to a more insecure and explorative genre of subject matter, the work I have created thus far has spoken to me simply and profoundly.

I urge the viewer not to try to understand what I was experiencing, but connect in some way individual and important to them.

Past, Present, Future Exhibits

MY LIFE STORY
I grew up in Bakersfield, was raised by two artistic parents, was urged to investigate my possibilities and given the tools to do so. I spent a few years at Bakersfield College studying drawing and photography, sporadically visiting my brother in San Francisco for a taste of an artful and art-accepting city. Just after my twenty-first birthday I left to spend a summer in upstate New York, teaching art to over-priveledged east coast children, inevitably learning about tolerance and patience. The next summer I returned, found a new friend, and promised myself to move from Bakersfield. My new friend and I ended up in Portland, Oregon, where I found the extreme opposites of Bakersfield everywhere I searched - environmentalism, liberalism, foreign films, musicians on the streets. There I learned to love experiencing. I met artists and musicians, poets and activists, learned to love coffee and riding the bus, began writing and playing music. But I felt there was only so much I could give to the city. I came back to Bakersfield with the assumption that I could use the tools learned in the art communities of Portland to improve my own hometown. After meeting Brent Eviston and Vikki Cruz through working at the Bakersfield Museum of Art I realized this was possible. The two Bakersfield natives challenged me to scrutinize my own artwork and provided an honest and open space for critique and exploration, taking what Vikki and Brent learned during their time in San Francisco, Berkley, and Los Angeles to bring about necessary and positive change. I plan to be here for a while and look forward to seeing this community grow and progress and, even more, I look forward to continue to be a part of the positive change. I am currently a student at Cal State Bakersfield, studying art, working as a designer and photographer's assistant at Heasleys' Photography, and creating artwork in my studio at home during the evenings and on the weekend.