“As If” reflects upon growing up in a period of extreme mass consumerism after a boom in American Markets in the early 90s. The phrase was used frequently by the character Cher Horowitz, in the 1995 film Clueless, a parody of this time.
These two words, a preposition joined with a conjunction, are grammatically two elements that should never immediately be put together. Collectively it is a statement of complete resistance and a denial of a language system. 

The two works included in the installation are a series of six collages and a 36-part ceramic installation yet to be titled. Stick-on earrings were mass-produced accessories targeted to young girls in the early 90s. As a precursor to a customary female right of passage (piercing my ears pierced at the local mall’s Claire’s Boutique) these single-use plastics became a way to enact a role predefined by the expectations of companies perpetuating the importance of gender expression through product. While their production is ubiquitous today, I feel guilty about where all of these little stars and hearts and moons went after their short lifespan, as I am now an advocate for the reduction of plastic production. As a group of 36 handpainted slip-cast porcelain shapes, the series presents only an abbreviated segment of an accurate sticker sheet.

Making them became a way of revisiting the nostalgia for this brief period of my life, selecting colors and patterns of my own as a way to address my inner child’s opposition to conformity.