that's_Amore

At its core, Being is built directly from my personal journey through art and life. As my process loops between physical and digital, the work pulls from an expanding archive of my own history. The models and datasets behind the collection carry everything from the industrial landscape paintings I made growing up in suburban New Jersey—sandwiched between shipping trains and ports—to the deeper realities of adoption, family, memory, and absence that shape who I am. This continuous experimentation collided with my entry into Web3. Seeing a culture of digital artists rendering virtual glass, alongside blockchain day-traders using art as their social media profile pictures, felt like watching the William Gibson novels of my youth actually come to life. Being is my direct response to that culture, resulting in a multi-generational digital output that bridges my physical craft with this new online world. Inspired by this space, I began hand-sculpting faceless physical glass busts, simply called "Beings," which act as optical lenses that capture and distort whatever environment they are placed in. By photographing these sculptures and bringing them into the digital realm, the physical Beings become the core models for the new digital art. It creates a circular process—the physical glass anchors the digital work, and the digital experimentation continuously feeds back into my physical craft.