From the Body Mask Series 2016

These Body Masks are models of full human scale constructions found in PNG, large enough for one to stand within. They’re ‘full body masks’. In making these, I think about the masks we wear every day, how these masks are in constant flux, shape shifting with us as we make great efforts to describe and confine ourselves into…who knows what. Against the broad, beautiful flow of life, the extraordinary beauty of creation, we draw our own limits, creating our own ‘outsides’. Sometimes they're approximately true and sometimes they’re re-packaged earlier versions with an updated, more glamorous spin and sometimes they're hastily patched together with whatever positive affirmation that’s close to hand and more often than not, they have no bearing as to the state of our insides at all. Body masks have this duality, plurality that fascinates me; I imagine them hard yet fragile, like they’re both protective yet open to opportunities, with the capacity to either guard against or hold safe some central inner truth; careworn and polished by the passing years that mark our time. I like making them because I can pick them up & hold them in the palm of my hand, just as I imagine my God holds me. Our body masks contain our souls.