I consider myself a contemporary miniaturist. The miniature tradition, vibrant in many cultures through the centuries, has been largely abandoned in the art world of the twenty-first century. The format provides a uniquely intimate experience for viewers, forcing them to pay attention to what is usually overlooked; I use it to focus on increasingly neglected parts of the urban experience.

New York, where I live, has always been a place of immigrants and expatriates, of migrants and pilgrims—a place where you lose your past and find your dreams. The life we leave behind, and every future it might have offered, is the price we pay for becoming New Yorkers. It is easy to see the extreme outcomes: the shining successes and the acute failures. What I am interested in is the quotidian—the buildings, people, and memories that can fall through the cracks if we do not make ourselves consciously aware of their existence.

I can’t help but notice an entire generation of New Yorkers seemingly lost on their own streets, their stories decomposing with their illusions. I want to create in miniature a narrative of the places they left to search for their city dreams, and of the cost—the loneliness and alienation that frequently can be experienced in the multivalent, glittering kaleidoscope of New York.