Over the past decade I have made a lot of art about monsters, zombies, fractured relationships, identities, systems and landscapes. I have called some of the work Counterspell work because the making of new objects from found and broken objects felt hopeful and restorative. I have called some of it elegiac or post apocalyptic because it felt like I was lamenting lost lives and ideals and ways of life. The Elegy sculptures were eventually and maybe obviously relegated to my environmentally themed work and while often touching on the ways humans inflict damage on the ecosystems and landscapes, did not feel like they were really speaking to the human experience and predicament. If I have made any art that truly addresses the human condition in this bizarre and terrifying Anthropocene age, I have probably done this through my art about ghosts and hauntings.

My Haint art is the big umbrella over all of my work now, I think. All of these bodies of work have been made in response this place we are in, this time when everything feels off kilter and broken in the world. It’s not about fear mongering though. My ghosts are frustrated and angry and are thumbing their noses at those of us infected by nostalgia. I think my ghosts sometimes creep into my work when I am contemplating the potentiality of an apocalyptic implosion of systems and norms. They start eerily banging around in my head and studio when I am really feeling frustrated and discouraged. Some days they represent doors that no longer latch and release secrets. Some days I see them as metaphors for human consciousness. Sometimes I think they are just there banging around so I won’t rest and become complacent. They keep rattling their chains so I will keep asking questions.

The current situation in our country and around the globe is destabilizing. We are all looking for familiar rhythms so we can get on more even keels and get on with our lives but the onslaught of hate and destructive forces are really challenging and disorienting. I, for one, feel like I am living in some weird in between space, existing in the shadows or the gaps between fear and expectation. I feel like a ghost banging around as the empire falls.