I recall the first time I took a magnifying glass outside in the sun, carefully focusing the light of a celestial body almost 100 million miles away into an intense dot that quickly and neatly melted the arm off a plastic army man. The unseemliness of concentrated power was fascinating to my young mind, and I was only peripherally aware of enacting the cliché of the hubristic child-god who gleefully destroys his toys. Instead, it was the raw “cool factor” of wielding in my hands a magic wand instead of a scientific instrument, diving head first into the gap between practice and theory. The distinct pleasure of confusion (not to be confused with willful ignorance) seems to exist in its most potent form at the childhood crossroad of wonder and knowing. As we grow older, we like to think that we are more aware, and thus in control, of the mysterious powers of the world around us.

My current work is object-based and sensual. A game ofhide-and-go-seek with the themes of suburban aesthetics, craftsmanship, intimacy and consumption. At risk of enacting a further cliché of the jaded adult mourning the loss of childhood, I want to offer that we can rescue the experiences of pleasure and novel delight from the mere memory of our pre-adolescent inquisitiveness. It takes the activity of radical and at times aggressive play coupled with a rigorous material experimentation to dismantle the cognitive barriers that inhibit creative possibility and the embracing of imagination.