Artist Statement

I find myself interested in work that seeks kinship among media and methods of making.  I am drawn to ways of working that deploy both discipline and an openness to serendipity. I prize our essential differences and I think that we can get to more interesting definitions when we draw inclusive lines around the apparently-different, and look at them together with their common ground, rather than only ever drawing exclusionary lines between them. (Pronouncing two things to be disparate leads so often to actual disparity. Drawing attention to their similarity can lead to metaphor, and sometimes, poetry). 

In 2023, I completed a residency at Officina Stamperia Del Notaio in Tusa, Sicily that sparked a new body of work which delves into the language of the road: construction fences, chains, ropes, and, especially, the wordless “universal” code of the directional signs, how it implicates bodies and the body. I am using cyanotype as a drawing method in many of the works.

I have recently finished Salt for Salt, a project I started in summer 2022 in Sardinia that works with photographs, largely made on runs, holographic material borrowed from my Reflections series, and a hand-punched Morse Code transcription protocol — mostly Q code and quotes from literature—to build a one-sided narrative conversation.  There’s a lot of repetition, halving, and mirroring, and the visuals include references to outmoded forms of communication, such as antennae, telephone poles, and light houses, as well as vistas that feel post-card like, evoking as always, the absent other. How I understand it now is as body of work about choosing to disconnect.

In my Colorwash series, which I revisit regularly, I make ephemeral paintings, using gouache, pastel, oil sticks, and natural cleaning products, sandwiched between layers of acetate — a material nod to my photographic background. I have to surrender to chance when I add each layer of acetate, as it alters the paintings.  In my Reflections series, which I work in tandem and also love to revisit, I fashion makeshift setups from reusable holographic craft materials.  I document both sets of temporary work using analog sheet film and a 4x5 large format camera. I am rigorous in documentation and I let myself make photographs of my paintings and setups—I focus selectively; I use the camera movements; I choose my perspective; I chase the brief animation of each piece.  I work quickly with the plodding camera and I hold my breath, pursuing, if I am fast, a single exposure before a painting slides clear down the acetate or before wind—or a tug of the dog’s leash—can topple the work.

The Colorwash/Reflections series follows in the lines of the Surrealist photographers, particularly its female artists, in the lines of the Abstract Expressionists, with their meditative, exuberant gestures, and the Color Field painters who showed us the visceral experience of color. It follows also Corita Kent’s love of color and her devotion to plork.

I studied literature in undergrad and then went to graduate art school, ostensibly for writing, at a school that allowed for blurry lines among disciplines. So literary influences run deep, too—Annie Dillard and the lyrical essayists, whose act of essaying—attempting—to ask and answer questions is foundational to my approach. Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the magical realists, whose truth-telling centers on a world of possibilities is a guiding force. Eve Babitz, whose unabashed delight in living life is a continual inspiration. And of course, the way poetry can bring together unlikely connections is close to my aesthetic center. I read a lot. I am also profoundly and daily impacted by the rich and varied work I take in in my capacity as an art advisor.