Art is how I think — it's where perception, psychology, and meaning-making become something you can actually walk into and feel.
You decide who will appear in Artforum Magazine, take home $25,000, and display their work at The Art of Elysium's Salon!
I work across photography, installation, and immersive/XR environments — anything that lets me build a perceptual experience rather than just an image. My practice sits at the intersection of fine art and cognitive research, so I'm drawn to work that does something to the viewer: shifts their attention, destabilizes a habit of seeing, or invites them into a sensory world they didn't expect. Lately that's meant adaptive multisensory environments designed with neurodivergent audiences in mind.
Where do you find inspiration?Mostly in the gap between how we think we see the world and how we actually do. I'm a perception researcher as much as an artist, so I find inspiration in cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and the strange edges of attention and ambiguity. Outside the lab: punk archives, vintage photography, the texture of cities I've lived in, and the communities I teach in — especially neurodivergent learners, who consistently remind me that there is no single default way of experiencing reality.
What would you do with $25,000?$25,000 would fund Phase 3 of Mindesign Labs, the XR initiative I co-founded at the intersection of immersive art and therapeutic practice. The work explores how sensory-tuned virtual environments support emotional regulation and embodied processing for neurodivergent participants. Funds cover Unity development, participant compensation, and hardware — producing a publicly exhibitable installation alongside peer-reviewed research, so the work reaches both clinical and cultural audiences.
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