My practice is positioned in a strong commitment to Western regional concerns about irrigation, landscape, scale, vastness, tourism/travel as a ritualization of Manifest Destiny, and the Sublime; yet I consider myself a sculptor that comes from a place of rigorous conceptualism. Rather than romanticizing it, my work can be seen as an investigation of the romanticization of the West. In a way I am one of Robert Smithson’s bastards left searching for my intellectual ancestry in this weird non-site of Utah. Conceptual rigor paired with an earnest approach to art-making and efforts to understand myself in the context of America—and especially the landscape of the American West—defines my practice. I understand the cynicism that seems to be prevalent in contemporary art practices, but mine is an earnest cynicism that may not find hope, but explores the way our ideas about beauty are formed. Overall in my practice, I find myself concerned with things like the relationship of the landscape to what it means to be American and an exploration of the Sublime (that can be found in the romanticized West). These are admittedly ambitious themes to tackle, but I don’t try to create the Sublime, for example—I try to explore the meaning of the Sublime and why it’s been important visually, aesthetically, and historically. Because my practice is concept-based, the materials and processes I use vary greatly. Consistent is my interest in form and architecture and landscape and the nexus of those things.