I've kept track of my very vivid dreams for as long as I can remember. It’s an intimate look into my brain, which I approach with only love and wonder, never judgment. When my parents moved out of my childhood home a few years ago, I stumbled upon some old dream journals when packing that were completely fascinating to me– striking me that dreams should drive my work.

Dreams are only experienced by the dreamer; they are deeply personal and yet so intangible. So much more than plot, they are emotional, visual, heartfelt experiences that feel just as real as “real life.” Pursuing this body of work through 3D modeling and animation was the natural decision, as it allows me to capture this delicate balance of reality. I often get asked, “What kind of camera do you use?” or “Where did you create this set?” There's a moment of pause where people question if they're looking at the “real world” or something of complete fiction– the same feeling one has when one wakes up from a dream: did that really just happen?

Moreover, the digital medium allows for recurring motifs throughout the body of work. This repetition hints at the feeling of a recurring dream, while also referencing reductive symbolism to trigger bigger concepts, as used in mythology. An example of this is the chair that appears in Like a Lollipop, I’m Proud of Myself for Not Saying I Love You Back, and I Just Get Bored. This chair is modeled after the desk chair I had in my college apartment when I started this body of work.  I haven’t physically seen that chair in a couple of years, but I’ve dreamt about it. However, I’ve seen my model of this chair many times since I last saw the real thing. So, am I dreaming about the chair itself, the model of the chair, or is this chair just what my brain now associates with the concept of “chair”?

Hanging up the first renders I made using this process in my studio at Dartmouth, I  knew I had arrived at something. Just weeks later, dozens of renders filled my studio walls, except for the wall above my desk that was reserved for scribbled quotes: “The waking human experience also might be an illusion.”* I started recording my dreams on my phone every morning when I woke up, still half asleep, and became absolutely consumed by the hilarious or perplexing things I heard myself say when I listened back to transcribe it into drawings. Just like my concept of chair, my waking and dreaming experiences were blurring, or perhaps they were both illusions. As the body of work and research continues to grow presently, I am less sure what inspires what– the dreams or the work. 

This is the universe that exists in my head.

*Barbara Hahn and Meike Werner, The Art of Dreams: Reflections and Representations (de Gruyter, 2016), 35.