ARTIST STATEMENT:

Los Angeles - long recognized for sensory overload caused by consumerism, materialism and image - inspires my work.  

My art evolved over many years, moving between painting, sculpture, and drawing to build connections between my psyche and America’s political, social, and spiritual history. In both imagery and materials, this work is an exploration of identity, often defined by dynamic relationships between humanity, machines, sexuality and power.  

Intrigued by discovery of Depression-era tissue-paper dress patterns and tools used by my seamstress mother, I explore aspects of the sewing industry as metaphors for a changing society. Repurposed dress patterns, found objects, and images of machines from the industrial era are symbolic elements suggesting ideas about survival, self-reflection and forces that govern perception and experience.

The sewing patterns themselves are annotated with evocative and eccentrically worded directives that address the human form as if it were a sculpture or a choreography to be performed. These altered patterns, applied in sheer layers with acrylic inlay, take on a dreamy, quasi-architectural quality suggesting both space and line employed as emotionally charged elements. The fragility of tissue evokes male notions of delicacy while the precision and rigidity of printed lines cut, restrict and bind the female form suggesting ritual tattooing, medical incision or cuts of meat.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, my relationship to the sewing marks lexicon became more schematic. I continue to employ my trademark tissue patterns as emotionally charged elements of abstract composition; and color burst into my studio. Within each piece, the familiar transforms into the strange and terrible, beauty is edged with the unknown, and cabin fever sets in. Embedded is a hint of humor (and number 19) in reference to the power of even dark humor to help us cope with anxiety, fear and trauma.