"I’m a conceptual installation/assemblage artist who creates site-specific and time based environments using a variety of media and technology. The materials I use primarily are clay, found and rescued objects, recorded sound, photography, video, and light. The themes I draw on are based on my questions, insights, doubts, hopes, frustrations, concerns, and conclusions about the world around me. I have always been fascinated by the connections between social and cultural phenomena and personal psychological experience. Human stories inspire me, fill me with admiration, and also terrify me. My work is at times painful, at times joyful, and always viscerally attached to the realities of contemporary life, my own, and those who share this planet with me.

--Tessie Barrera-Scharaga