In ornamentation, a grotesque is a weird swirly or dripping mass of elements including people, shells, animals, plants, and architectural elements. A grotesque tends to be formally unremarkable when viewed at the large scale: the overall rhythm and shape follows established notions of fair curves and ideal geometry. Upon looking more closely the individual elements may seem strange or incongruous: architectural settings are suggested at most, the scale is inconsistent, a sword-wielding rabbit terrorizes a man in the nude. But upon looking again more closely, in isolation the elements are often rendered well within formal norms for the period, and with a remarkable attention to detail.

  Learning the language of design mirrors this process. At first the designs in question seem everyday, default, even banal. Upon learning more, most unremarkable designs are revealed to be unsettling collages of elements which are historically and aesthetically disparate from each other. But upon looking again more closely, haphazard beauty can be found in the historic and aesthetic particularity of the references.

For this reason, some of the objects that are most exciting to me are things which seem everyday or banal because they often have the greatest weight of history behind their parts. They force me to ask, why is this my default? This is the impetus behind my research.

I think the process of design is always and necessarily a patchwork of influences and signifiers. The designer pulls elements into proximity but doesn't create them any more than a writer creates new words--which is to say occasionally, but only with extensive contextualization with existing and established ideas.

My work is about literalizing this collage. My Ahistorical Reproductions start when I fixate on an historical object. I recreate this object with special attention to scale and proportion. I begin to research the object as I work. I dig into the biography of the original maker, and their other works. I try to locate aesthetic and functional influences and situate them within a timeline to determine their ideological (rhetorical?) expression. The research modulates how I reproduce: I become more interested in the meanings of parts of the object and focus on replicating or subverting those meanings in my recreation. The making also modulates my research: the process helps me become intimately familiar with the object that I don't get from just looking at it.

I also make a lot of gifts for the people in my life. This is also a practice of literalizing a grotesque and mirrors the process of making my Ahistorical Reproductions. When I make a gift for someone, I try to set aside my own aesthetic sensibilities as much as possible to make something the recipient will appreciate.