My work focuses on tactility, tradition, and playfulness. I endeavor to produce works that you can “feel,” no matter the medium, that are participatory in the long global tradition of visual storytelling through painting, illustration, and printmaking, and that evoke a childlike sense of fun and play.

Physical books, prints, and pieces of art, particularly children’s stories, were the things that first sparked my interest in artistry, and I hope my work can go forward and live as items in the world capable of sparking such joy in others.

I use references to folklore and pop culture to position my work within the storytelling traditions that shaped me, both global pop culture and the Slavic and Central Asian cultures that mixed in my home community of Bukharian Jewish immigrants in Queens, New York. Even when there are digital elements to the creation of my work, the point is always to create a physical artifact that can travel and impact people directly and unpredictably.

I hope to remember myself and remind others that art is not merely something for the viewer to consume but the product of human labor with physical materials. That art exists physically, that it affects and is affected by the world in which it exists, and is necessarily a part of the infinitely ancient human tradition of art making and storytelling.