Floorboards creak as I stand, basking in the colored light pouring in through the stained glass windows. Reds and blues wash over my arms and legs, transporting me into another reality, distracting me from my own. My father created stained glass windows for churches. For most of my life, I stood in these sacred rooms, fascinated by how unburdened I felt in a space set aglow by light and glass. The magic of the colored light with its subtle changes captivated me more than the windows themselves.

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As a young artist, I began exploring ways to create something that even mildly produced the same calmness.  I wondered how the usage of glass could be expanded. Could the glass be used as a vessel for the creation of a different type of art? This is where I began to change my understanding of glass, and explore past the false limitations put on the medium. I investigated the use of glass as a vessel for the creation of light art. This was something which I had not been particularly exposed to, but was intensely fascinated with. I wanted to understand how glass could manipulate light into something so mystical. 

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Throughout my life I have always been drawn to explore change, particularly in the human experience. Perhaps this is due to my younger years of self-loathing and excessive introspection, or perhaps it is because I want to change. Glass handed me an escape from the egoism and allowed me to be enveloped by something larger than myself. 

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Over several years working with glass, I have gained an understanding of its materiality. I enjoy exploring the microcosms of glass art: specifically the interactions of color, light, and movement and how those interactions make me feel. I work to compose an environment which the viewers are allowed to physically and emotionally explore.  Free Your Body: Free Your Mind is an immersive experience: through the use of light projected through kiln-formed and blown glass hanging in mid air, invisibly suspended from the ceiling, viewers are invited into a space beyond themselves, into an environment that is alive and subtly changing. Viewers are bathed in transforming light that covers every inch of their bodies. They can watch as light, pattern, and color move over them and throughout the room, allowing them to shift their perspective: they are not the center of this space but a living moving part of something much greater than just themselves.