I don’t make pretty things.
I approach issues in my work that are not pleasant. Domestic violence, mistreatment of the female body, and constructive criticism of the groups that commit and perpetrate those acts are my focus.
Early on, I began exploring connections between the notions of female, body, space, home, and sex. As I tried to unravel their individual meanings, they became more and more enmeshed. To remove one from another was to negate the other’s very essence.
My exploration organically developed into a visual dialogue. Characters, when individually considered, appear to be humorous and border on absurdity. In combination, they form a language that speaks of social and personal history, horror, and redemption.
Most recently, elements of female religious iconography have emerged. Mary appears in all her forms: the virgin, the saint, the mother, the prostitute, the wife, the redeemed. She implies the collective feminine—the symbolic thread running through our physical, spiritual, and ancestral spaces.
Just as the symbolism is heavily layered, so too is the actual physical work. I use layers of media as lenses to simultaneously illuminate and shield the complexity that resides within each layer of my female experience.
Much of my work is created on disposable or previously used materials. My purpose is to reference women who have experienced violence, either by their own hands or others, and how they are ultimately perceived as 'disposable' in America's consciousness. Truly, American culture is defined by its addiction to disposable objects. So it is with these women who are given a brief thought ("Oh, what a pity,") and discarded from our consciousness.
But those women have not been discarded from the female collective consciousness. It is their memory that guides my work today.
I approach issues in my work that are not pleasant. Domestic violence, mistreatment of the female body, and constructive criticism of the groups that commit and perpetrate those acts are my focus.
Early on, I began exploring connections between the notions of female, body, space, home, and sex. As I tried to unravel their individual meanings, they became more and more enmeshed. To remove one from another was to negate the other’s very essence.
My exploration organically developed into a visual dialogue. Characters, when individually considered, appear to be humorous and border on absurdity. In combination, they form a language that speaks of social and personal history, horror, and redemption.
Most recently, elements of female religious iconography have emerged. Mary appears in all her forms: the virgin, the saint, the mother, the prostitute, the wife, the redeemed. She implies the collective feminine—the symbolic thread running through our physical, spiritual, and ancestral spaces.
Just as the symbolism is heavily layered, so too is the actual physical work. I use layers of media as lenses to simultaneously illuminate and shield the complexity that resides within each layer of my female experience.
Much of my work is created on disposable or previously used materials. My purpose is to reference women who have experienced violence, either by their own hands or others, and how they are ultimately perceived as 'disposable' in America's consciousness. Truly, American culture is defined by its addiction to disposable objects. So it is with these women who are given a brief thought ("Oh, what a pity,") and discarded from our consciousness.
But those women have not been discarded from the female collective consciousness. It is their memory that guides my work today.
