Selected Works.

In my own work, I use themes from research in Victorian natural history to understand my personal experiences and interests in the 21st century. The larger concepts I am interested in are preservation, materiality and immateriality, opacity and transparency, and temporality. Many of my pieces involve printing photos on acetate and other more unconventional materials such as tea bags, leaves, and dryer sheets. I am interested in using installation as a bridge between the 2D and 3D through techniques such as placing my images in a Viewmaster toy reel and allowing viewers to have a nostalgic way of viewing my photographs or by using overhead projectors as sculptural objects to create a new dimensionality to my 2D photographs.

Below are documentation images of installations that I have created in the last three years that bridge my interests in photography, Victorian natural history, and shadow art. Though they are documentation photographs, I see these images as pieces of their own and through the creation of art installations, I have been able to create worlds that exist temporarily in a physical installation sense and in a more permanent digital sense as photographs.

Botanical Photography

An art installation using matted inkjet prints on acetate and Arri lights

Victorian Bird Iconography

Art installation using overhead projection, acetate prints, and a house-shaped bird cage.

“If it Had a Pencil, Would it Write Back?”

Art installation using fishing line, miniature clothes pins, glassine envelopes, ink, Arri lights, inkjet prints on acetate, letter wax, and laminated plants

In addition to my installation work, I also produce images that remain in a two-dimensional form both commercially and artistically. I have worked with magazines such as Gravy Magazine to produce editorial photographs and conducted photoshoots for graduating seniors, weddings, headshots, etc. I have also done a photographic series documentary photographing people and their occupations along Highway 127. I have also had many pieces exhibited at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts for the Shrode Photography Contest.

Illinois College Press Association Shoot Your World 2nd Place

Student Work.

As a graduate student, I have been a teaching assistant for 8 courses and worked closely with students throughout my three years in the MFA program. The MAP I class is a foundations course that rotates 50 first-year students, divided into small groups, through a series of three-week modules allowing them hands-on experience in many areas of artmaking with different faculty members. Section topics include photography, lighting, audio, etc. The goal of the MAP I foundations course is to integrate first-year students into an interdisciplinary mindset of artmaking quickly to develop critical thinking skills and an eye for project development.

Throughout my graduate studies, I have been a part of the development of this course since its first semester in the fall of 2021. I have filled in for various faculty members while they have been on research and conference trips or have taken ill. In the Fall 2023 semester, I filled in for a three-week-long module for the MAP I foundations course while the professor I was a teaching assistant for was traveling for multiple conferences. The module I taught was MAP I: Photography. In the three weeks I had with the students, we looked at many photographers of various backgrounds and topics in our units on composition, portrait, and self-portrait. The students were exposed to the foundations of photo editing in Adobe Lightroom, techniques in composition, and storytelling using photography. I led four days of critique of student work and had discussions with students on topics relating to the technical aspects of each photo as well as how these elements informed the viewer of the deeper meaning that the artist was trying to evoke. Images from this three-week module can be found in the section below.

In my first year of teaching in the foundations course, I worked with students on performance, charcoal, cinema, photography, coding, etc. In a class of about 50 students, many worked directly with me in class and in office hours. One student, whose work from the course can be found below, met with me out of class throughout the semester to discuss coursework and plans for the future. She was very interested in graduate school and I discussed possibilities with her that would best suit her creative interests. In the fall of 2023, she was accepted and enrolled into the MFA program at SIU.

Foundations self-portrait assignment

For this assignment, students were required to photograph themselves using lighting techniques discussed in class and demonstrate an understanding of composition and camera controls.

While working as photo editor at the SIU newspaper, the Daily Egyptian, I mentored many undergraduate and graduate students. Many of these students had never used a camera and had never taken an art course. Part of my position was to interview, hire, and train these students to work on the photo desk and produce photos for stories on the other desks at the paper as well as their own photo stories. Two students that I interviewed and hired were two international students from Nepal. Both were in the School of Architecture and had never used a camera. Through one-on-one meetings, workshops on camera controls and editing, and critiques, both in person and online, these students quickly developed an eye for constructing a photograph and visual storytelling.