Artist Statement

Artist Statement

I currently live in coastal Maine, the most recent of many seaside places in my life. Islands and ocean environments have been potent drivers of my aesthetic language.

Research, dreaming, drawing, handwork and assemblage are essential ingredients in my work. Currently what I make involves undoing as much as doing. I dismantle previous work and re-use some elements to construct new compositions. Patterns of light and dark created by perforations have become a way of drawing. I collect polypropylene rope cast-off from fishing boats, skeining the individual threads, and knitting matrices for hanging sculpture. I forage wasp nests and peel the layers to be used as a material.

Printmaking infuses my work, facilitating a confluence of replication, pattern, and boundless variation.

Throughout my career I return again and again to drawing from life and imagination. I attribute this pursuit in part to the example of Ashley Bryan (mentor, friend, professor emeritus of art at Dartmouth College), a prolific visual documenter of the phases of his life via sketching. The cut-outs and line drawings of Henri Matisse continue to animate my ideas for conveying beauty and nuance with spare shapes and markings.

Using textiles as a medium at parity with other art disciplines, Faith Ringgold, Ann Hamilton, Magdalena Abakanowicz, and Olga D’Amaral have influenced my ideas about fiber art, mixed media, activism, race, and age. I am drawn to the art of Ruth Asawa, Louise Bourgeois, and Kiki Smith for their drawings, unconventional materials, and idiosyncratic imagery. Ana Mendieta’s direct bodily engagement with earth elements and primal ritual speak directly to my ecological concerns and use of found natural objects such as wasp paper, rocks, shells, roots etc.

Experiences of personal loss and the pandemic have given me a sense of expressive freedom brought about by a distillation of personal and artistic experience. My intention is to convey the vulnerabilities of our physical existence while simultaneously countering with the consolations of beauty, contemplation, resiliency and transformation. My yoga practice is essential to the process as it integrates physical, intellectual, and spiritual knowledge.