Life as Art as Medicine
Laraaji at Xhuch for the Laughter Medication workshop for which StarChild performed opening sound bath.
My installation work explores themes of inner landscapes made outward, psychological realms made terrestrial through weaving of objects and ideas into artistic form. How do you walk through an emotion, physically look at a thought? Sacrament and ritual are the breathing of spiritual philosophies or creative dreamscapes into this earthly realm.
Melting Sky Gallery, Portland OR
Curated group installation piece featuring live performance by Dolphin Midwives
Pony Club Gallery, Portland OR 2011
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
There is little documentation of this work, however this is a video of the live imagery obtained through EEG technology of an audience member of the work by my collaborator for the Project, Stephanie Padden. This piece was a full scale cave with sculpted stalagmites and stalactites, drops of water hand blown from glass, through which the audience explored to discover their own live brainwaves, measured visually and with sound.
UCSC Open Studios Winter 2009
This process piece was funded by the Eduardo Carillo Memorial Grant. I organized a collective of individuals to explore the tangibility of trauma. We met individuals one by one and I asked each individual to dig into the earth the shape of a past event that could be described as a trauma, revealing as much or as little as they wished. We then poured beeswax into the cavity and turned it into candle. We then met as a group over dinner to share our thoughts on the experience, then woke at sunrise and walked together to a graveyard from the 1800s and lit the candles together at dawn. The remnants of the process were displayed with a door pulled from the wreckage of a burned down home, and canvas flowing from a picture frame upon which those viewing the installation could use charcoal to contribute to the work. This piece explored emotions and inner psychology as a medium for sculpting the physical aspects of the work on a collective scale.
Film photograph by Wilder Rose of the UCSC Stone Lithography Studio where their lithographic works were completed.
Winner of the 2010 Cowell Press Prize
Images used in branding including big screen promotion at Laurelhurst Theater
Modeling for Aniela Parys sustainable clothing and lingerie.
