The Crush is a body of two- and three-dimensional paintings and drawings that examine the founder of Mormonism’s (Joseph Smith, Jr.) practice of polygamy, in which he married at least forty women and girls–some as young as fourteen. This body of work heavily references the only known photograph of Smith and a romanticized church-produced blonde-hair, blue-eyed Smith alongside images of myself as a teenage girl.

The work’s style is an adaptation of an actual crush on Leonardo DiCaprio that I harbored as a young y2k teen. References to notebook page drawings [Take Her and Giver Her (The New and Everlasting Covenant), Mrs. Joseph Smith], an oversized heart-shaped locket [My Heart Will Go On], and materials like colored pencil, stickers, and paper mache, etc. bring the absurdity of Smith’s behavior into a familiar aesthetic and contemporary light. It’s cult leader heartthrob meets Tiger Beat magazine. The work maintains a humor and playfulness that expresses the innocence of childhood overshadowed by disturbing signs of a deepening obsession.

Two sets of oil paintings on rock salt (Praise to (My) Man/Portrait of Joseph Smith and Holy Trinity) materially reference the Great Salt Lake and provide a grotesque backdrop for Smith’s hollow eyes, tight lips, and wrinkled skin, which become frighteningly real in their attention to detail, repetition of image, and closely-cropped compositions. The Crush is not only a reminder of the polygamist practices Mormonism is founded upon, but also of the broader societal pressures on young women to idolize and obsess over boys and men, placing them in vulnerable and dependent positions.