My work reanimates archival photographs through layered mixed-media processes that bring historical figures into “present tense,” exploring identity, cultural memory, and belonging.

My interest in history began early. My father was a history teacher, and our home was filled with books, artifacts, and objects that carried the weight of centuries. History felt revered and palpable, yet silent—present, but not alive. In contrast, my work begins with a search for images that feel alive. I spend hours exploring digital archives and historical photographs, drawn to faces whose gaze suggests a life continuing beyond the moment captured by the camera.

Questions of identity and belonging shape the way I engage with these subjects. With Indigenous roots in the Americas as well as ancestors who immigrated through Ellis Island, I am deeply interested in how personal and cultural narratives intersect. The figures I select often exist somewhere between historical record and myth—individuals whose stories have been simplified or obscured over time.

Using digital alteration, pigment printing, acrylic paint, and layered collage, I transform archival photographs and place them within textured environments built from transfers, monoprints, and fragments of historical imagery. Through this process, the figures shift from historical documents into something more symbolic—icons suspended between memory, myth, and contemporary interpretation.

Ultimately, my work explores how history lives within us and how the stories we inherit continue to shape our understanding of ourselves and one another.