Artist Statement

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My practice investigates mortality, grief, and care through painting, printmaking, and sculptural taxidermy. I predominantly work with animals that have died young from natural causes, stillbirths, maternal rejection, illness, or from accidents such as roadkill. Through preservation, I extend mourning, honoring these lives while resisting the violent legacies of trophy hunting and museum display, which prefer spectacle over individuality.

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As a chronically ill person whose survival depends on continuous medical intervention, I live in a body that was not built to endure. My existence is not evidence of my strength but of circumstance: I was born human, a species deemed worth saving. This shapes a profound kinship with the animals I preserve, bodies that, like mine, were too vulnerable to survive on their own. The tension between human-animal privilege and non-human-animal vulnerability underpins my practice, which positions taxidermy as a quiet act of grief. 

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I also cast carcasses and bones, creating forms that preserve anatomical presence even when the hide is absent. These sculptures balance fragility and weight, absence and permanence. They expand the language of taxidermy into material studies of endurance and loss, extending the animal’s afterlife through form. These works are not taxidermy, but they are extensions of the same ethic. They slow down the viewer, drawing attention to labor, intimacy, and softness. Alongside the physical act of working with animal bodies, I create paintings and print-based works that document, memorialize, and extend the experience of care. These pieces depict the tools and gestures of the process: an animal mid-skinning, pelts soaking in tanning solution, scalpels, needles, scissors, and thread. All arranged with precision and tenderness.

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I often incorporate lace, satin, and flowers to signal a shift toward gentler, empathetic methods, aligning with the growing presence of women practitioners who resist the masculine legacy of domination in taxidermy. By leaving visible seams, staging rituals of replenishment, and maintaining the works over time, I frame taxidermy as both art and medicine: an ethic of care made tangible. My work asks viewers to consider how systems of value determine whose lives are preserved, whose are overlooked, and how acts of care might reimagine worth across species.