Hi everyone! Thank you for your time here today. Let's get started, shall we?

It’s no real news that the last seven months have been extremely trying. I AM a smidgen contented in the knowledge that it’s felt like it’s been Wednesday for at least 5 years for everyone. Time moves differently, and it’s felt very disconnecting to move from my studio, to my home studio, back to my studio studio. The work that I do here at glass versus the work I do at home vary in focus. For example, here, I focus more on the Void as a narrative, whereas at home, I’m looking inward and introspecting a lot more. I’m not thinking about the Void, because I AM in the Void. It really feels like doing the most while also doing a whole lot of nothing. You know, kind of like being trapped in a void.

So what is the Void? The Void with a big V is something that has been around my entire life, and yours, but didn’t get an actual name until I met my partner, Alexis. Alex was a big man, figuratively and literally. He towered over me both in height—which isn't hard to—, and presence—also not a difficult feat—and you could feel when he entered a room full of people. There suddenly would be this eerie, strange sort of change in pressure, and buzzing hanging silence while people turned their heads and looked at him. He was also the most chaotic, and all-over-the-place, hurricane type of person. He used to lose everything. You know how the saying goes “everything in its right place?”. Well, that concept was completely foreign to Alex. Because even if something was meant to be in its right place, it oftentimes ended up elsewhere, only to reappear at the least opportune or useful time. We used to say the Void taketh, and the Void giveth back.

So when I said that the Void has been around my entire life, I mean that the Void, by any other name, is a collection of stories and places that help with explaining and processing what happens when you’ve lost something you hold on to dearly. It wasn’t until I had the time to reflect on what it was that I was feeling when Alex left this plane that I decided to explore what it meant to me. I realised that the essence of the Void lore itself is a universal trope that has taken on many coats and monikers throughout time and cultures around the world, from monotheist religious texts to native and indigenous folklore. Before the Glass studio closure, I had been exploring working with clay and making small oddly shaped objects. Clay felt like a brand new world, and it was full of opportunities. I was building tiny bowls with three legs, and containers that only fit one sugar cube. But once I was working from home, that changed. I found myself making more traditional-like cups and plates, and really thinking about the endurability of every day objects.

I also spent a lot of time with my photo archives and library. I re-read books on a few old favourite subjects, including death and mourning traditions and lore, a smattering of folktales from Laos where my dad is from, and finding myself obsessing about my upbringing in poverty, a child of immigrants living in a concrete tower filled with people like me, and how it’s moulded me into the person I am standing here today. I’ve also looked into and researched card games, old travel books and guides and thumbed my collection of photos of death notices on street corners and catacombs from my time in Naples in 2019.

So with this whole Void narrative, I’m exploring the duality of life, which extends to the objects that we use. I am also addressing loneliness, mental health in times of trauma, the endless search for happiness, and the ambiguous fruitlessness of capitalism.

My time as an experiential designer and prop builder conditioned me to think of my work in a more hyper-local sort of setting. So for example, this term, I’m really focusing on this Fata Morgana Café location as an experiment. It just doesn’t feel right to show these objects not in their intended environment. Maybe you are familiar with Charlotte Salomon, a German-Jewish artist during WWII who exiled to France and whose life was marred by suicides and depression. While in exile, she kept painting and the series was called Life? Or theater?. It resonated with me for the obvious reasons that I think that we are all the actors of our own lives, which really digs into my love of philosophy, and solipsism, and navel gazing.

Currently on this prototype set are items that are handmade, and what I would maybe consider more heirloom-like in quality. They’re special, they’re unique, they’re OOAK. There are also more affordable versions that I’ve designed but have production partners produce for a fraction of what a handmade object would cost. I am also thinking in terms of installations that are lived-in and practical, but where everything is also for sale, because the thinking is that everything is fleeting and we don't really own anything in the end, including the land we are standing on.

In terms of audience, my preferred answer to “who do I do this work for” is simple: myself. The answer to “what will I get from it?” is just as brief: validation. If I’m being honest, this MFA is a total vanity project. I don't necessarily need it to pursue my endeavours, however, I need it to be able to process and get the validation that I need in a setting that is more conceptual, allows me to think of it deeply and doesn’t involve a profit margin. I need it because I am too broken to help others who find themselves in the same predicament. I need to understand what I’m going through before I can guide others to the other side. Because this validation for me, presents in the form of healing from my past, and present. It’s allowing me the time to take all these intangible thoughts and turn them into moments and objects of delight and joy.

However, I understand the ramifications of building and showing my work in this public sphere are a little more complex. Marcel Duchamp of the Dada movement allegedly said that art is created in isolation and cannot feel complete until it has been presented to an audience. To that effect, what does that mean for my work and the validation that I seek?

My aim is to provoke thought around processes that are felt to be experienced alone but have been known to be collective experiences in an approachable manner involving memory-making and nostalgia. Beyond that, I’d like this work to resonate with people who are interested and curious about the end of earthly human life as the one unifier and the rituals and traditions associated with it. The Aztec, for example, believed that life wouldn’t exist without death.

As a commercial artist, I am used to creating with specific audiences in mind, but when it comes to my own work, I choose to do it for myself first and foremost and all others come as a secondary bonus.

So, it does stand to admit that while the audience I am aiming for is very targeted and specific, everyone has experienced loss and trauma. I would like to think that while the work I am doing is universal on the surface, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details.

That is my hope for the Void: an experience that can be broadly enjoyed for its theatrical aspects that mimic life, as well as further investigated when the details reveal the devils lurking beneath its surface. Participants leaving with a smile and something to think about is the validation I am looking for.

Beyond school and this more conceptual aspect, this project fits within the French Fury’s world. The French Fury is an entity I have been doing business as since my first and only group show in 2012. She is kind of the Hannah Montana of the Void. She is the tits-out alter ego of the character The Adventurer that ventures into the Void whose story I have yet to fully develop, although she is the official architect of all those locations. This is worth pursuing because installing or even creating an online scavenger hunt, for example, can address quite a few topics based on the how and where. Depending on the Void location being shown or the products created, it could be a sarcastic commentary on capitalism, or an observation on forced, voluntary or situational isolation. It’s also about making memories and memories, and how we remember things not quite as vividly as they were, or how we think of them in shinier, brighter terms.

I would like potential patrons to feel like owning and/or experiencing art is accessible and not confined to the white walls of an ‘institution’. Art is as pedestrian or high brow as the entities writing, exhibiting or selling it present it.

Ultimately, I would like to develop work around the world I have created, really anchor its existence in writing, and keep exploring applications as applied or/and conceptual popup experience/shops. The long term vision is to expand the universe of the French Fury and the Void and leave it open for others to interpret and make as their own.