I produce artworks that are an aggregate of the personal narratives of my life, those around me
co-mingled with my understanding of American power dynamics and their impacts. These forms exist as stories as well as material objects joining the earthbound with the synthetic and ready-mades tracking their own energetic and capital driven supply chains. How do systemic structures buoy and harm the commons while forming a backdrop for the American Dream? These structures and systems do this in ways that embeds itself in people’s lives, mind, and body as it vibrates in the metaphysical space surrounding us all. My art expands on this understanding of power and their entangled relationships by considering  how violence and its ripple effects travel across time and geographies in the stories of my own family. Having been raised by immigrants, I have visceral memories driven by myths of meritocracy in an adaptive, ever-striving environment constructed from the brutality of the exalted and the disposable occupying the same space. Accessing critical analyses and fantasy via my own emotional and socio-political understanding of gender, sexuality, Greek-American identity, folk mysticism and trauma, I synthesize ancient and contemporary mythologies into a tactile present.


In 2019 I became the Artist in Residence at Los Angeles County’s Office of Violence Prevention housed within the Department of Public Health. There I guide  the Violence, Hope and Healing Storytelling Project which records stories of people who have navigated and survived violence spanning the diverse cultures and geographies of Los Angeles County.




Medusa Chthonic Chimes, 2019
Pink Himalayan salt crystals, black bituminous coal, rose quartz, Tiger’s Eye, acrylic paint, enamel paint, epoxy clay, nickel plated cast brass chandelier chain, nickel plated chandelier canopy, silver chain, porcelain and brown stoneware clays
77 x 18 x 18 inches
       
Los Angeles Museum of Art | Commonwealth and Council

Mark