DISAPPOINTED TOURIST is an intimate personal reflection on pilgrimage and pain, rendered as a series of mixed media sculptures on bronze bases. Lost-wax cast bronze bases support and disrupt the forms they support, which are made of plastic, foam, canvas, photographs, fur, beads, and found objects. This is the smallest scale that I’ve worked at. The sculptures are discrete and portable, like reliquaries. Through this work I meditate on personal narratives that emblematize the search for god in the physical world. These works are intended to capture the conflict between anticipation and disappointment in the presence of sacred places and objects. The central trio of sculptures in DISAPPOINTED TOURIST represent sites where my mother broke down in disappointment on trips to Mexico City: at the sight of the tilma of St. Juan Diego depicting our Lady of Guadalupe, in front of the Tiffany Glass Mosaic Curtain in the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and in the Hotel Catedral. I am intrigued by moments when pent up aesthetic and spiritual expectations meet the reality and exhaustion of pilgrimage. I see this project as a space to explore several expansive themes—the complicated relationship between nature and travel, the desperation that fuels creativity, the ambivalences of religious experience, and the power of objects to transcend their materiality. DISAPPOINTED TOURIST has been exhibited at venues including Åplus in Berlin, AFTER HOURS GALLERY in Los Angeles, and the Lightner Museum in St. Augustine, FL.

Phillip Standing in His Boots on His Mother’s Zebra Skin Rug, 2022, 7” x 8” x 14”, materials: bronze, canvas, altar server robe, hand wound rope, snail shells, acrylic, foam, microbeads, fur

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Phillip Standing in His Boots on His Mother’s Zebra Skin Rug, 2022, 7” x 8” x 14”, materials: bronze, canvas, altar server robe, hand wound rope, snail shells, acrylic, foam, microbeads, fur

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