Artist Statement / About Current Projects:

Since 2003 I have been looking at the science and discourse informing explorations of outer space to examine their effects on culture, materials, and technologies, and to produce alternative narratives. Through phenomenological events and participatory installations I am interested in staging elements of our subconscious fantasies about space. Particularly in focus for me is the collective desperation—as well as libidinous longing—for freedom from the body, materiality and consequence that accompanies the 21st century Space Age.

The impetus behind the work is that space is a potentially useful place from which to monitor looming environmental disasters, examine global inequities in wealth and resources, and examine gender politics as they are reflected in the use of optical technologies. It is also a staging ground where racial anxieties and existential crisis have long been pre-figured. It seems important at this juncture in history to critically engage the excitement generated by current space movements on these topics in particular.

Strange Attractor, my current project, re-frames centuries of study about the heavens and related scientific models within the context of nuclear and weapons research, human relationships, and the gentle art of perfuming. The project makes connections between the attraction/repulsion qualities of scents; theories of gravity, chaos and particle physics; and the chemical properties of organic compounds from essential oils, pheromones, insecticides and chemical weapons, many of which overlap.

Specifically, I am working with a scientific glassblower and organic chemist to make a series of patentable, multi-layered bottles that model planetary systems and atomic elements. In addition, I have made eleven original perfumes, each inspired by science fiction, or celestial and atmospheric phenomena, as well as scented prints, drawings and chromatograms.