To Look Without Fear

Opening March 29, 2024 - Give Rise Studio, Frederick Maryland

“To Look Without Fear” is both public and private; politically engaged and forces conversation on sensitive subjects. This collection is not one to only view but to experience. Working with sculpture, photography, light installation, and interactive objects, I have created a space based on my interconnections to environment, relationships, and experiences. Focusing on past trauma in the current moment, I have learned to accept and trust my feelings and experiences, enabling me to find a healthier way to deal with life challenges bringing my uncontrollable mind into the physical world through object-making. This process was never intended to be a collection for public viewing, but an ongoing personal therapy that has saved my life over again.

Focusing on the events that altered my life, I reflect on my relationship with the gay community. Each assemblage holds trauma, violence, grief, and/or healing. Main topic points include male-on-male rape, childhood grooming, knowing the community you live in, objects in religion, and self-healing. Concepts such as these have a stigma that could lead viewers to turn away if announced on the surface. So I have designed this collection to have each work “Untitled” and the only description being a basic outline drawing on each title card. Following the concepts of contemporary artists Doris Salcedo and Felix Gonzalez-Torress, viewers will not be shown the true meaning of each piece. They will conceptualize the works based on form while interacting with their pre-conceived thoughts and knowledge based on the visuals I give

Allowing each viewer’s personal experience to drive the conversations, I have created the physical forms. It is the viewer’s job to create and lead the conversation.

I have chosen to work with found objects, and materials including latex, wood, pigment, LED lights, mirrors, and plaster. Visually this collection holds a lot of rectangular shapes in design, both 2D and 3D. Color stories are created in red, black, and white. Each pigment is chosen for a specific hue. The most significant materialistic process that I created, is using my blood as a medium. Anything that reveals the color red in this collection started with my blood. I dried it out, mulled it into a powder, and added oils to create a paint-like medium.  The black pigment I use absorbs the most amount of light creating a flat surface on 3D objects. Objects masked in the black paint show little form or texture. The viewer must get close and personal with each object to understand its form.  Latex stretched over metal forms inked with visuals and lit from within; children's dolls encased in white pigment, referring to body and physical touch. Iron casting sand, wax, metal structures, and multiple types of light sources connect to the physical mechanical process of modern production of an object. Finally, the use of LED lights drenches the viewer in the spectrum of red light. I am transforming an architectural space and turning color into an immersive and embodied experience. I use light as a sculptural material, exploring viewers' physical and emotional effects.

The works have been a healing process for my personal experience growing up as a gay male in a religious community. I create because I need to. The works serve as proof of therapy a process that has kept me alive and transforms trauma into its physical form.