ARTIST STATEMENT

The puzzle of understanding how humans think and behave sparks my interest. As a prior researcher and student of social psychology, I love to abstractly capture both the vulnerabilities and idiosyncrasies that are uniquely human. I find the nuances of how we think, feel, and behave remarkable and sometimes amusing. We are befuddled and apologetic for being who we are, human, with all our foibles and insecurities revealed. People also face unbearable pain in going through life and find themselves in powerless positions. It is this vulnerability, which could be either transitory or profound that I want to explore.

In my art, I usually play with negative space and components that fit like puzzles. I first started making quilted pieces that I constructed dimensionally, usually based on mathematical algorithms. I have transitioned from these original quilted pieces still maintaining the puzzle concept and negative space.

I have used silk painting from the early years having been drawn to the vibrant colors, the flow of dye on silk, and the lines that could be created with resist. The property of silk that I like best is the transparency that can be achieved with light. I learned a technique of adhering silk to acrylic glass with the silk becoming one with the acrylic. The outcome is a rigid piece that when light shines through radiates the color of the dyes on the silk. With silk painting, I also combine batch dyeing, printing, and collage. I frequently use laser cutting of the acrylic glass in my process.

Creating pieces that require light has led in my pursuit of custom made wood bases from which my pieces can stand upright. I create these with traditional woodworking techniques. My work with wood and learning woodworking has resulted in wood becoming more integral with my art, particularly live edge wood, like cedar. To these pieces I juxtaposition hand felted or hand dyed fabric pieces that are sometimes hand or machine quilted. It is the contrast of the hard wood and soft fiber that I find interesting.

I am intrigued by those things that are larger than life, like trees. These beings have a knowing grace that seems to surpass our limited knowledge of the world. Their lives span many of our generations, but their strength and sturdiness remain vulnerable to the finality of an ax. This contrast between strength and fragility is interesting and represents our own vulnerability. I envision an inner world of the tree which takes on human characteristics and feelings, and might include the great wisdom that time affords, the sweet sadness that all things must pass, and the joy of simply being in this moment.