ABOUT

ARTIST STATEMENT

I love "to make" art/objects and draw inspiration from both visionary artists who create through obsession and need, and ancient art born of ritual and culture.
My work is propelled by reaction to the present- personally, politically, spiritually, regionally, and globally.
I tackle imagery through metaphor and material.
My form encompasses sculpture, installation, assemblage, photography, and mixed media.
In each piece, the process and materials are married to the conceptualization.

For example, in my piece Wheel of Wonder my exploration is in response to the death of a former student, Shalita Middleton. Her death occurred just shy of her 18th birthday on a college campus. She was an innocent bystander. The shooter was also a young college freshman. What makes our hands create or destroy? The bicycle wheel is an archetypal symbol and also a crude roulette wheel; further amplified by the kinetic construction of this piece...the wheel can turn round and round. The repetitious rectangles of mirror make each viewer a visual part of the piece and plays on the ideas and meanings of “reflection” and “mirroring”. The tiles in which I’ve etched hands in various acts are stylized, reminiscent of Nepalese Thangka paintings, in which each drawing and gesture corresponds to spiritual meaning. Thangkas are intended to serve as a record of, and guide for contemplative experience. The repetitious act of cutting and placing the many small pieces also served as a means by which to be purposeful in the wake of unimaginable inhumanity, an act repeated by all cultures in times of grief.