Endangered Gifts, 2015
I make art with things that are in danger of being ignored. I have worked this way for many years now, and it holds my attention like nothing else can. I would stop doing it if it ever felt unimportant or the work became redundant. I’m finding instead that this investigation keeps me curious and alive- thinking, learning, and wondering, yet somehow still a bit unclear.
My work tackles the awkward, haunting, hidden, broken or hard to handle “stuff” of life. It’s a quest to provide a resting place for the forgotten.
I never know where my materials will come from. They appear when they are ready to. About a year ago I was gifted with materials that belonged to another artist who had passed away. The works I have been creating since then have a spirit and heart that comes from combining her objects, pouring her paints, and listening for what they’d like to do.
As I make the works, I feel as though I’m dealing with a burden that always needs something from me. I make it almost too awkward to live with and then I figure out a way to live with it anyway. Sometimes the materials could go really wrong- the touch or smell can become just ominous enough that I must pay close attention to it regularly, so no one gets hurts, sick or whatever- it’s like caring for someone who can’t care for themselves.
I live with my work- that is the way it needs to be. The restrictions and benefits that come with making the work at home are as much a part of the story of the work as the materials I use. I like being there for all the questions that the art asks.
Collapse, March 2013
My sister and I collected bricks from a collapsed farmhouse down the street from where we grew up. We noticed many objects in the heaped piles: a child size afghan blanket, plastic Easter baskets, twin mattresses, a wood stove, all laying there in the dirt, leaves and sticks.
For months, I had driven past the house as it crumbled. I couldnʼt go by it without looking. The roof slowly caved in, exposing interior bedrooms and bathrooms.
Eventually, the entire middle section of the home was in full collapse. All that remained upright were some teetering bricks.
I remember stopping at the house on the school bus, waiting for some of the children who lived there to get on or off. I always looked closely at the cracked, dull windowpanes and crawling vines, wondering what it was like to be on the other side. The house became a landmark of my life, a place that I would examine each time I returned to my parentʼs house, a place that I visit again and again in my mind.
It is the Sludge, 2012
It is the sludge at the top of lake that refuses to sink.
I can see them, exhausted masses dragging themselves up out of the water.
I see them climbing through the dark up rickety stairwells, slinking towards safe solid ground. They are searching for each other.
They lie limp on the studio floor, where so many of them are born. They dangle from the ceiling or hide in corners resting on pillows. They move from floor to wall to ceiling and back again.
These masses come out of each other.
I tend to them simultaneously— stitching wildly, filling their hollows, building layers of skin, binding them together, and tearing them apart. The evolution is long and unpredictable. Transformations are frequent. Joy, embarrassment, sorrow, anger and love surface, infusing themselves in each fragment.
A scrap of raw red onion waits on the sidewalk. Flesh-colored stockings lurk in a dresser drawer. Work boots are dredged up from beneath the bed. They tell me what to do next.
Regenerated, they live on as frail organs, barely pulsing and awkwardly beating within each mass.
Heavy and slow, they float with grace and honor anyway.
I make art with things that are in danger of being ignored. I have worked this way for many years now, and it holds my attention like nothing else can. I would stop doing it if it ever felt unimportant or the work became redundant. I’m finding instead that this investigation keeps me curious and alive- thinking, learning, and wondering, yet somehow still a bit unclear.
My work tackles the awkward, haunting, hidden, broken or hard to handle “stuff” of life. It’s a quest to provide a resting place for the forgotten.
I never know where my materials will come from. They appear when they are ready to. About a year ago I was gifted with materials that belonged to another artist who had passed away. The works I have been creating since then have a spirit and heart that comes from combining her objects, pouring her paints, and listening for what they’d like to do.
As I make the works, I feel as though I’m dealing with a burden that always needs something from me. I make it almost too awkward to live with and then I figure out a way to live with it anyway. Sometimes the materials could go really wrong- the touch or smell can become just ominous enough that I must pay close attention to it regularly, so no one gets hurts, sick or whatever- it’s like caring for someone who can’t care for themselves.
I live with my work- that is the way it needs to be. The restrictions and benefits that come with making the work at home are as much a part of the story of the work as the materials I use. I like being there for all the questions that the art asks.
Collapse, March 2013
My sister and I collected bricks from a collapsed farmhouse down the street from where we grew up. We noticed many objects in the heaped piles: a child size afghan blanket, plastic Easter baskets, twin mattresses, a wood stove, all laying there in the dirt, leaves and sticks.
For months, I had driven past the house as it crumbled. I couldnʼt go by it without looking. The roof slowly caved in, exposing interior bedrooms and bathrooms.
Eventually, the entire middle section of the home was in full collapse. All that remained upright were some teetering bricks.
I remember stopping at the house on the school bus, waiting for some of the children who lived there to get on or off. I always looked closely at the cracked, dull windowpanes and crawling vines, wondering what it was like to be on the other side. The house became a landmark of my life, a place that I would examine each time I returned to my parentʼs house, a place that I visit again and again in my mind.
It is the Sludge, 2012
It is the sludge at the top of lake that refuses to sink.
I can see them, exhausted masses dragging themselves up out of the water.
I see them climbing through the dark up rickety stairwells, slinking towards safe solid ground. They are searching for each other.
They lie limp on the studio floor, where so many of them are born. They dangle from the ceiling or hide in corners resting on pillows. They move from floor to wall to ceiling and back again.
These masses come out of each other.
I tend to them simultaneously— stitching wildly, filling their hollows, building layers of skin, binding them together, and tearing them apart. The evolution is long and unpredictable. Transformations are frequent. Joy, embarrassment, sorrow, anger and love surface, infusing themselves in each fragment.
A scrap of raw red onion waits on the sidewalk. Flesh-colored stockings lurk in a dresser drawer. Work boots are dredged up from beneath the bed. They tell me what to do next.
Regenerated, they live on as frail organs, barely pulsing and awkwardly beating within each mass.
Heavy and slow, they float with grace and honor anyway.