[image/object]

A sculptural investigation into the uneasy relationship between appearance and belief in an image-saturated world.

I began prompting AI image generators to produce photographs of “useful tools,” interested in how the machine doesn’t understand how a tool works—only how one tends to look– a performance of utility, based on everything we’ve already shown it. These strange, speculative images shaped by algorithms trained on the enormous, unseen archive of our digital visual culture hover between artifact and accident.I then translate these digital renderings into physical forms using synthetic materials like resin, wax, fiberglass, epoxy clay, silicone, and vinyl. They become relics of visual logic, detached from utility, existing only as evidence of a system that keeps producing form without content. The result is a kind of ghost object: born from a system trained on our visual habits, made physical by hand.

I’m interested in how the promise of function is designed to trigger desire: how something can look helpful, innovative, or body-aware, while being hollow at its core. The flood of imagery feeds a fantasy of self-improvement through objects, even when those objects are cheaply made, unnecessary, or destined for the trash.

This project is funded in part by the South Carolina Arts Commission which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts and is also funded by a generous award from the John and Susan Bennett Memorial Arts Fund of The Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina.