Artist Statement
How it all started…
When I was 14 years old, studying at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston Junior Art School Glassell, one day I came across the image you see to the le. It was in the gutter on the street and I used it to create the college you see in the image above. We were later assigned to design a form of a shrine with any theme or concept and I chose to use her, the figure in the center that I would later name “the Goddess”, “Shrine of the Goddess”, etc. But I also included several concepts or stories of Yin & Yang, along with researching the form of Japanese and Chinese characters. This resulted in me discovering that both languages have the same first character for “Love”. I took this as an opportunity to spread the concept that love is everywhere by using the “door” to the shrine to cover the two chinese characters so that it was a reveal from japanese to chinese. Which was followed by another assignment I refer to as the “Cigar Box” because we were being taught how to reuse a cigar box as a canvas. I took a different approach then the rest of my class by utilizing a custom lid in order to create the illusion of two hands holding the world. Following the themes and stories I heard about and depicted in my graphic novel of Yin & Yang again- (Shrine of the Goddess I depicted Yin & Yang as the moon and the ocean with the goddess representing mother nature)- by illustrating the world as Yin & Yang as two koi fish forever circling around the eternal pond of life and balancing the universe.To this day these two fairly small interactive artworks are my favorite (Aside from the painting Peaceman) and what inspired this interactive lifesize artwork you see today known as “The Shrine of Love, Peace, & Balance”. My mother would oen say things like “take what you’ve learned and use it... recreate it... these techniques require practice...etc.” so I thought why not combine these paintings in a life size installation? But something was missing from this idea until Covid19 officially canceled in person events, interactions, and etc. It suddenly hit me, what was missing was the interaction, the concept of perception and perspective came to mind, what if people could come into a space that was socially distancing safe in which interaction is possible again? Thus, began the idea of a spinning Yin & Yang to be the centerpiece of what is now my third lifesize interactive installation. Please note that a shrine is not limited to represent only a religious or meditative space that is more along the lines of a temple. A shrine can be defined as a place you built with what you care about and respect based upon all forms of shrines found throughout diverse cultures. In order to be respectful of Chinese culture I grew up around and attempt to connect with my Japanese heritage I did almost if not a year of research analyzing cultural architecture and beliefs specifically, visiting literal shrines in San Francisco and a class focused on daoism (essentially the origins of yin and yang) and historical conflict between China/Japan. The main objective in creating this work as an artist was to drive my ambition to its fullest potential out of my comfort zone with context reaffirming “My ridiculous obsession with Love”, all the cultures I’ve been privileged to be exposed to- wanting to share that, and learning how to navigate around the influence of current events/people.
