Azusa Pacific University

MFA Thesis Exhibition, July 2025

Squatting in those strange liminal alleyways where sacred and unsacred, saintly and heretical, and the beautiful and profane thrash together in a dance of chaotic grace, A Strange and Generous Kindness explores the opportunities of referencing the holy within a punk and street ethos and aesthetic framework—and celebrates their delightful correspondence.

The part of the human experience that I sought to explore and make real is a mystic concern: the sacred gift of being and the need for kindness when traversing seasons of spiritual loneliness, hiddenness, disorientation and thresholds of reconstruction.

Punk is both a celebration of authenticity and affirms that a person can present angry and messy—it’s worth voicing because we need larger emotional containers to process the grief, paradoxes and injustices of life.

Hands have a special way of incarnating divine kindness as expressions of truth and acts of tender care. My choice to re-present icons of Christ and saints’ hands from Byzantine, Orthodox and Catholic iconography through abstract painting, collage and relief printmaking invites a dialogue with postmodern deconstructionism and punk culture to explore afresh the ways in which a generous Kindness lives deep down in things; with us, often in the places we least expect.

Listen along to the opening reception playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4W18wPa6clEQHNGJgBK4o4