I am exploring constructions and symbols of cultural identity through the everyday and often invisible aspects of culture through sculpture and installation. My interest in visibilizing culture comes from having felt the suffocating power of silence and denial in a community continually recovering from forced relocation by the U.S. government during World War II. I use familiar forms and images to expose and question cultural values, how we raise children and how we live on a daily basis.

I have chosen the whirlygig, made with recycled redwood, to recount both personal and national events and states of mind. The whirlygig is a "folk art" garden sculpture often powered by the wind. It is the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" medium of self-expression that has traditionally illustrated mundane activities such as a man fishing or a woman milking a cow. Because the whirlygig is a symbol of the individual American voice and the work ethic, it has been a perfect vehicle to lay open cultural messages that are insidiously implanted in the American landscape, such as the celebration of state violence, or the fabrication of middle-class happiness. I have also adapted versions of it to materialize the notion of making "toys for a historically accurate childhood," playful objects that reflect my perspective of American culture. My whirlygigs critique the fascistic, hidden or denied aspects of my country while engaging the viewer in an oxymoronically amusing activity. In my own way, I embrace these forms as part of my American inheritance.

Machines and their parts, toys, things that move or suggest movement are also aspects of my explorations and inquiry about social and cultural systems. I examine groupings of single parts, cycles and repetition, functionality or dysfunction - these things, for me, often symbolize cultural forces grinding their gears and driving in directions I may or may not wish to go. Many of the objects that I make are inspired by my hope to have some kind of influence on how viewers are participants in culture and not simply subjects to it.

I am also interested in transmitting a message or feeling to the viewer and so I often make work with the user in mind. Through touch or the allusion of physical interaction with the sculptures, I hope to pose questions about collective responsibility and the nature of culture, to focus on the implications of the ordinary and to confront serious issues through playfulness and humor.

I invite the viewer to engage with the emotional-psychic space between the seriousness of today's events and the lightness of life, between angry cynicism and informed optimism. I aim to challenge the viewer to look at their participation in the culture by facilitating an experience through interactivity, environments and familiar objects. I am searching for answers to my own questions. I hope that through playfulness, we may be able to see more about ourselves.