Henry Miller

"When the whole human race is rocking with laughter, laughing so hard that it hurts, I mean everybody then has his foot on the path. …Nobody can persuade you at that moment to take a gun and kill your enemy; neither can anybody persuade you to open a fat tome containing the metaphysical truths of the world and read it. If you know what freedom means, absolute freedom and not a relative freedom, then you must recognize that this is the nearest to it you will ever get. If I am against the condition of the world it is not because I am a moralist - it is because I want to laugh more. I don't say that God is one grand laugh: I say that you've got to laugh hard before you can get anywhere near God. My whole aim in life is to get nearer to God, that is, to get nearer to myself. That's why it doesn't matter to me what road I take."

Bernard Schilling

“In tragedy once more man is great but is destroyed nevertheless. In comedy man is weak and small and inconsistent, but is redeemed by reminders of his greatness; his weakness is tolerated because he is man after all, and has what strength there is, within himself. If man is not great then nothing is, although it deals with things that show man as less than he should be."

E. B. White

“All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.”

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

“Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”

WHY JOY?

I create work in search of joy, self-discovery, and human connection. Humanity is overwhelming, and I can't help but feel everything too deeply. But it is our shared humanity that allows us to connect through the absurdities of life. One of those absurdities is that I am a conceptual functional furniture maker. I grew up in a home surrounded by furniture made by my grandparents’ company, Old Colony Furniture. The pieces were the most valued objects in our home and had a major role in my imaginary play world. Later, as I became an artist, it made sense that I would express myself through furniture.

In a difficult period of my life, I lost both my father and stepfather to cancer and got divorced. I made a memorial fountain for my beloved stepfather. He taught me unconditional love and generosity, and… he was a constant prankster! So, I installed a secret remote-controlled pump that could spray people when they gathered around. Up until this point, I had been building a body of easily manufacturable upholstered furniture. But when I was at my lowest, I could see I needed to change my path to bring laughter and joy into this world.

The fountain taught me to listen to what my work was telling me about myself. Since then, I have been on a path of self-discovery. Every part of my practice: studio work, teaching, events, and community outreach, stem from the knowledge I learned about myself through furniture making. It is my guidepost, my center. When I am lost, I can read the map of myself in my past work and it helps me make my next step. My favorite thing about my practice is that each answer leads to another question.

I sometimes use social commentary to provoke thought, such as “Sit like a Grrrl,” but I primarily seek to elicit more elemental feelings –surprise, power, joy, bewilderment, or bliss. The surprise and fear when you think your chair is breaking followed by the relief and pleasure that it was a trick. Or tapping into the power you feel when “dressing up” in my Static Adornment series. I am a collector of wigs and costumes. I often bring them to commonplace events because I love the way people open up and transform in costume. ‘The Hideous Beautiful New Reality’ and ‘What is Real?’ are both self-referential and self-deprecating. They address the dilemma of the craft artist making furniture in the digital age. Which is more important, the object or the photograph? These pieces are humorous, but also create space for myself and others to be vulnerable and open up about feelings of inadequacy. They provoke meaningful conversations and connections. Living the comedy, not the tragedy.