Rooted in the shifting margins of South Louisiana, my practice examines the relationship between ecological and engineered systems, forces entwined and continually reshaping one another. I am compelled by nature’s quiet insistence on reclaiming the built world. Historic New Orleans structures lean and settle as architecture slowly rehearses its return to the ground. My sculptures inhabit this threshold, taking the form of provisional architectures that sag, tilt, and pull apart, mirroring the precarity of living within a flood-prone landscape.
Working as both sculptor and material researcher, I approach art-making as applied inquiry. Each project begins with an inventory of place, asking how form might emerge from the resources a landscape already provides. In my recent work, The Crossing Bridge, I developed a low-carbon composite from compressed bayou grasses, proposing a regional alternative to the extractive logics of conventional building materials. My work seeks material systems that align aesthetic possibility with environmental responsibility.
Currently, I am developing oyster-lime mixtures produced from discarded shells. Locally sourced, circular, and low carbon, this material draws on historical building traditions while imagining new ecological applications. I envision sculptures cast from oyster-lime returning to the waterways to support reef reconstruction, allowing art to function simultaneously as cultural object and restorative infrastructure.
At its core, my practice considers the human impulse to endlessly repair what is breaking, an instinct rooted in care, fear, and attachment to tradition. Yet the natural world models another logic, one in which decay and transformation are necessary conditions of survival. My work inhabits the space between these approaches, questioning whether resilience must always mean preservation. Through material experimentation and site-responsive forms, I propose a different kind of endurance, one grounded not in resistance, but in a willingness to evolve alongside the living landscapes that surround us.