Statement

I am interested in the interstitial regions, the places where opposites meet, the gray areas that tend to be everything but gray. There are pregnant moments where fate can go one way or the other. There are also pregnant spaces where reality could be one or the other or both at the same time. What do we call that area between the sand and the sea? Between dreaming and waking? Where does happiness end and misery begin? Where is innocence lost and where does knowledge start? It is easy for us to deal with abstract concepts such as good, bad, reality, illusion, life, death, past, future. These are the poles that we use to define our existence. What we are unsure about is the spaces in between where we actually live our lives, where things become muddy, where the compass is spinning in place. And yet, this is the most interesting place of all, the open space where creativity happens.

In my current body of work, I try to locate that region in the lives of women. I am interested in how our lives are both shaped by our ideas of womanhood and how they defy what we have learned to expect. I construct large sculptural wall pieces that incorporate materials traditionally associated with femininity. Beads, ribbons, yarn, tulle, and flowers are covered and transformed with layers of encaustic (wax). Their fluid nature is thus arrested, their softness abolished or sometimes accentuated to new effect. My creations reference celebrations, weddings in particular, and the enormous weight of the expectations they carry with them. They address questions of feminity, personal and societal expectations of women, and the feelings of both hope and pain that women encounter in trying to meet those expectations. They try to locate the intersection between innocent belief and the inherent loss of innocence. I work with and marvel at the many connections between beauty, celebration, and the tragedy of loss.