About |

I was born in Africa, in Lagos, Nigeria. My family moved shortly after my birth to Antigua in the Caribbean where I spent the next few years of my early childhood before coming to the United States. My introduction to the United States was a blur of new sights and contrasts from my life overseas. In the midst of this transition I stepped into creative awareness aimlessly drawing and sketching in preschool - pouring out lines from my pencil and finding new worlds in the mess. Abstraction was my first avenue into genuine creation and artistic expression, soon supported by a deep admiration for a host artists ranging from Michelangelo to Picasso, whose works I copied and studied with deep interest as a child. At a young age my aesthetic sensibility was nurtured by the interest and supportive leading of my father, the assertive and practical encouragement of my mother, a handful of teachers who recognized my talent, and friends who were always a curious and engaged audience to my artistic activity.

High school culminated in my big step into the world of sculpture along with my introduction to the dynamic medium of clay. More than copying or reinterpreting reality within a two-dimensional frame, as I was used to in drawing and painting, I wanted to create objects that took up space in my own multidimensional world as expressions of force and being. I wanted the life of my work to be kinetic and self-aware; both holding and defining its own presence. This drive has influenced all of my work since and was the foundation of my sculptural interests and explorations in college.

As a ceramics major at the Rhode Island School of Design I had both the freedom and the flexibility to develop the technical and philosophical aims of my work within the mysterious realm of an ever deepening and altering vision. Inspired by many artists: Isamu Noguchi, Rodin, Peter Callas, Tom and Elaine Coleman, Motherwell, Pollock… I began to explore connections of identity and relative versus inherent associations in the language of form. These explorations were reinforced and further catapulted by the voices I chimed with in my studies of new American poetry and literature (Baraka, Ginsberg, Hughes…) along with my deep interest in the classics and avant-garde of music ranging from Schubert through Coltrane to Radiohead.

My artistic efforts up to this point can be summarized as the reconciliation of beauty into an honest and constructive dialogue with the bare realities of our existence – defining the infinite within the finite.

I presently live and work in Long Island City/Queens, NYC where I enjoy the many benefits of being in a cultural and artistic hub of the world, with all sorts of inspiration finding me daily in its streets or falling within a subway ride away.