Fifty Carat Parrot (A Study)

As a queer artist who grew up in the American south, I draw upon the language of grandiose hyperbole and colloquialism which I make visual through lens-based media works. With excess and sensuality, I conjure and construct fantasies of the familial as I conflate the real and the ideal. This study for Recursive Tapestry mines the collective history of southern textiles as well as the experiences of my parents and grandparents who worked at the Chatham textile mill in western North Carolina. Compositing scanned collage alongside my own pictures, viewers are presented with a hypnotic meditation of materiality, fusing the then and now, queering the past and present.