How did you begin your career as an artist?
I grew up in a very creative household. From a young age, I tried everything I could get my hands on from painting and drawing to ceramics, but none of it ever spoke to me. I often felt tired and impatient in the search for an outlet. I knew I was inherently creative and loved art but I couldn’t find my voice, so I stopped looking for it.Soon after that, I fought a battle with a debilitating chronic illness that completely changed my life and in turn, my perspective. Eventually, I was lucky enough to heal and then felt as though I was given a second chance to live the way that I wanted to and not in the way I thought I should. From there on out, I promised myself to only commit my time to things that made me feel truly good. This meant saying goodbye to bad habits, unhealthy relationships, the traditional 9-5, and jumping head first into flowers, the thing that always gave me so much joy.My process is rooted in curiosity and observation. I love to take elements of the natural world – balancing both life and death – and reinvent them with the human touch. To me, it’s an emotional, non-verbal conversation I can have with the natural world. Through these expressions, we can learn about life and how we can think about our organic surroundings, knowing that our resources are beautiful, bewildering and fleeting.
What's your favorite part about the New York creative community?
It can be so isolating being an artist, wherever you are. But this city has an intangible feeling of interconnectedness where everyone’s creative spirit feeds off of one another. When meeting another creative, it's rarely a surface level encounter. Within the first five minutes, we’ve somehow covered both of our life stories, obstacles we’ve faced, why we do what we do and what is inspiring us right now. It’s wonderful to skip the pleasantries and go straight to the real stuff. We all have different journeys and mediums but it's very comforting to know that you're not alone on this non-traditional, non-linear path.
What's inspiring you right now?
Nature at large will always be my first muse, especially those little in-between moments that so many of us miss in our daily lives. The way the sand bunches up by the shore line or how the sun hits a single blade of grass blowing in the wind. How do you take what is already so beautiful and put it in people’s faces so they have no other choice but to look at it? Something else I’ve been thinking about alot lately is how we can live in harmony with nature in a large city like this – moving with the breeze and growing with the bulbs. This is a guiding light in everything that I do.
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