Monsters are real.

Sometimes monsters don’t look scary.

I have watched monsters in our world incite fear, violence, and hatred. I have witnessed monsters in our world taking what they want for themselves and leaving nothing for others. I have listened to monsters abuse their power, telling lies as if their words were truth. I have observed when they deny the destruction of our planet. I have seen monsters taking away the hard-won rights that people have fought for through history. I have been present while toxic masculinity in its thirst for domination and power reveals itself as a maker of monsters, while simultaneously hides itself behind it’s privilege and power.

“Monsters” grew from drawings of creatures that use automimicry, transforming parts of their body to appear as parts of other species, as in butterflies with spots that resemble eyes on their wings. This offers such creatures protection from predators, allowing the creature to be mistaken for another or allowing them to hide in plain sight. 

The  17th century Italian philosophist and doctor, Fortunado Liceti made drawings of monsters depicting different birth defects as animal-human combinations. Liceti’s drawings described such birth defects not as evil supernatural occurrences but as monsters requiring inquiry and admiration rather than fear and derision. My monsters are combinations of human males and creatures that use automimicry. They resemble humans but have abdicated their humanity to gain status and power through their destructive and self-serving behavior and domination of others. My monsters are to be feared, admired, and investigated.

Like monsters throughout human culture, the monsters in this exhibition are reactions to and manifestations of my fear and anxiety around the experiences of isolation brought on by the pandemic and the toxic masculinity present in the concurrent political and environmental unraveling I have been watching in real time.

Untitled Animation, work in progress

Monster Box Series

Seven Drawings

Ink jet prints, 

8.5x11