Shapeshifters, 2026
Alexander Brest Gallery, Jacksonville University | Jacksonville, FL
I am the Shapeshifter –
Never the same emotion,
same tone,
same smile,
but always the same soul.
I do everything with intention.
I am steady as a rock.
When the storm comes and the flood descends,
I can handle the boulders that
fall on me, that
reform me.
With my mind expanded,
with my body stretched,
I revel in the multiplicity of being
what was,
what is,
what will be.
The Shapeshifter, the embodiment of change, lives eternally in the form of the landscape and mortally in the form of the artist. In the way that geology fossilizes the past into a current existence, so too does the artist synthesize experience and knowledge into new objects; both entities are constantly, imperceptibly in motion. In this exhibition, I consider what it means to shapeshift in my practice, presenting a new body of work that expands upon a multi-year exploration of paper as material for representing geology.
Performers activate a sculptural blanket of rocks, the paper scraps of that sculpture become collage, and collage is bent and layered, expanding back into space. I ask the viewer to substitute the material transformations for natural vicissitudes of formation and erosion, deconstructing the apparent permanency of the rock. Making becomes a way of freeing myself from the bounds of human time as I attune to the beauty and detail that can only be achieved over the span of millions of years. In the present, I sit with the past to create a future, knowing that, like the land, I can shapeshift.
