about mookie

I’m a queer artist and teacher from San Francisco. My practice confronts society’s parenting, bringing children into the world as a quick fix. My work ruminates on children raised in domestic trauma. I examine family systems housing narratives of authority, dependency, isolation and degradation of authenticity. 

Through my personal foundation and working with kids, I externalize the child’s internal impotence, molding hard feelings into malleable safe spaces. My crocheted hand spun, plied and dyed fiber work embodies spiraling, simulating a journey: mending the mental through material. During Covid-19 lockdown, I created vessels for my community, bold and fearless balaclavas. The crochet creates a protective shell, defense built against emotional injury. Hats make you feel held, like a house sustains. I’m influenced by the deteriorating architecture of San Francisco’s historical Richmond District, where I walk my dogs, a solace from inside. 

Currently, I’m welding steel armatures for a collection of pet carriers, portable homes with painted, hand-woven and knit facades, that reveal and conceal family dynamics. These containers house sausage links: a symbol of toxic masculinity, the father of the North American home and government. My work serves as a warning sign-  seeking an ironic quick fix for Uncle Sam, to no longer hurt future generations, with the abstract urgency of the imposed, swallowed and disturbing sausages.  

I am consistently interested in the campy TV show, Pee-wee’s playhouse, which simulates the child freed from the patriarchy. The set design resembles the world I am building in my art practice.