My work explores the relationship to the body as it relates to gender, identity, self-worth, and intimacy. Weaving images provides a way for me to visually represent the interplay between these concepts. Self-portraits are a vehicle to express the personal and the universal experience.

“If we do not see it, do we believe it? Can you hear it?  Art can reveal truths in a way that might not otherwise be seen and embraced. The majesty of our environment may sometimes be missed.

 My art seeks to engage the viewer; to see that we are the river, the trees, and the sea or a ferocious waterfall. We are all connected, like the roots of trees, the stream of water, we grow together, we live together and die together. We create a harmonic resonance.  The sounds of nature inspire me as the waterfalls and trees move and flow, or sit quietly. My art layers the trees and waterfalls, streams and sunlight with the human spirit and form, so that we might appreciate this inter-connectedness. We need to seek balance and unity with mother earth.

My process is as layered as my concept. Using my archival digital photographs, encaustic paints, sometimes on molded fabric, my images are of humanity and nature as one. They become relief sculptures, hanging scrolls, or life sized fully three-dimensional figures. All the images are encased in wax; forever preserved or mummified. The wax sometimes explodes to echo the power of nature or can fade the image itself into a face or a bodily form. They unveil the power of nature and humble us, as we bow to our own fragility. It all seeks to visualize and remind us that we are our environment.”

Drawing on my experience as a painter, printmaker, and conceptual artist, I use photography to describe my world, not the day-to-day of it, but the sun-born visions and night-bound terrors that can’t be seen or understood until pictured. Memories and dreams, revelations and reflections, only come into focus when manifested in tangible images.

I work with a mass-produced family of dolls from the 1950s—the embodiment of an idealized middle-class culture, now relegated to tag sales and Ebay. Once models of conformity, years of handling have worn away their veneer of polite reserve and privilege, revealing emotional truths hidden just below the surface. While only four inches tall, they have power beyond their size, and my complex images address both individual and cultural histories. 

Working outdoors, following the seasons, water animates my work as it animates all life. Whether liquid or frozen, in droplets or ponds, it serves as both metaphor and lens. Worn remnants of plastic are transformed when fractured through panes of ice, reflected in liquid windows, or swathed in sodden paper or petals. Intuitive, improvised, my photographs are created entirely in-camera and in available light.

These images from my “Barbaric Glass” portfolio are photographed through sheets of ice. Just as glass is created by intense heat, ice is formed by intense cold. Both are fragile, reflective, and transparent. Both can create life-framing windows and mirrors, lenses that fill photographic frames with narrative possibilities.

These drawings are made with black and colored charcoal on paper. I often use vellum because it’s

malleable but resistant enough to hold a mark. I hold the vellum against myself and pass the charcoal

over the paper to record what is underneath: skin, hair, body parts, clothing. The marks record but they

do not render; that is, they show evidence of something that exists, but they don’t specifically describe

it. This gives me something to start with.

Looking at the marks is something like looking in a mirror, but it’s not only me I see. It’s other people, or

animals, or things from the world in the paper. They are like characters in a play I’m watching and writing

at the same time. I make additional marks and erasures to bring them out.

I work until something emerges that I want to keep, usually a sort of portrait or figures interacting.

Sometimes I see what’s inside their minds showing on their faces or through their heads and bodies.

They are clearly invented; they look monstrous, but also anxious and grief-stricken and tender. They tell

me things about being human, so I keep making them to learn more.