Just Put Him Back, is a response to my birth story. Of course this is based off of my parents re-telling of the story throughout my life. So, according to them I was born with a common condition called “lanugo.” Which means my entire body was covered in orange hair. In addition to be covered in hair I guess I also shit on my way out and was covered in dark green paste. The first words my mom uttered when she saw me were, “that’s the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen, JUST PUT HIM BACK.” I’ve always thought that this was a delightful story. This piece revels in that grotesqueness by presenting this desperate figure just wanting acceptance and love, but instead is doomed to be chronically rejected. Hahaha, my mom loves this piece as much as I do, and we both still love telling my birth story.

I cut my own hair and beard and have been saving the clippings in deli cups for the last four years. I did not know what to do with this creepy baby figure that I modeled in 2019, so after kicking the sculpture from one table to another in the studio, I finally thought it was time to use that hair. Now that is really easy to say but this was a really rough process to execute, because of the tedium separating, cutting, gluing, and applying human hair. By the end of this piece I promised myself that it would be a while before I used human hair to finish a piece again.

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