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Artist Statement:
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated with
organizing things. As a child I made elaborately decorated
dwellings for my Barbie dolls and spent hours arranging
their miniature households and inventing stories about their
lives.
Barbie wardrobe by Mattel wasn’t enough; I sewed tiny
clothes made from actual scraps of fabric from my
grandmother’s couture suits and bright pink feathers from
the duster I appropriated from the broom closet. Plastic
BarbieLand furniture was all I could get, but that didn’t
mean I couldn’t completely cover the little dining room
table with sequins, set it with fine china made from an
actual antique plate my mother accidentally dropped (she
cried), which I carefully broke into small, equal size
pieces. On these I served an array of delicacies made from
Play-Doh and small bits of real food from the fridge. In
courses. There would be a centerpiece made with only the
smallest violets from a patch that grew in a corner of the
backyard. Once Barbie’s DreamHouse was set up just right,
there were the stories…about her ancestors in Scotland,
about the blind dog named Roby she rescued from the pound,
about her romantic rendezvous with Ken, her plastic man with
the fuzzy painted hair.
These compulsions –the desire to create an environment that
matches an idea I have, an obsession with detail and the
outright inability to stop thinking up stories, or, even
more, looking for the fascinating and unbelievable, REAL
story behind the things people do-still drive my life. When
I found out about making sculpture and jewelry, I knew they
could also drive my work and be a way that I could bring
stories to life in a 3 dimensional format.
Most of my pieces tell a story or are inspired by something
that has touched me somehow. These days (post-Barbie), the
story is simplified into a single symbolic object, or a
symbolic combination of materials and imagery. The
dichotomies of life intrigue me most-the way our most divine
impulses coexist with our most earthbound ones, or the way
our most serious moments also have an aspect of humor, if
you can just step back from them. That’s why you’ll find
contrasting materials and images in my work, like precious
metals alongside rusted steel, or silver wrapped around a
carved piece of wood that has been painted with a bumpy
surface texture or recycled tin next to a precious stone.
Found objects, precious metals, colored stones, eggshells,
wood, recycled tin, gold leaf, paint , broomstraw, hair and
glass are the materials that form the three-dimensional
vocabulary I use to express some of the contradictions and
surprises of our world.
I absolutely love making stuff.
Technique Statement
I make mixed media one-of-a-kind and
limited edition pieces.
My work is made with a variety of
materials, primarily silver, but I also incorporate assorted
contrasting materials such as found objects, rusted steel,
recycled tin, carved wood, paint, gold leaf, eggshells, and
stones or pearls.
I fabricate each piece. Some of my work
incorporates some cast parts which I design and have
reproduced by a caster. This allows me the freedom to use a
part in a variety of designs. It also frees me up to be able
to spend time putting my ideas together instead of doing
tasks (like casting) that I am not as fond of. This also
allows me to design and make more one-of-a-kind work. I work
on every piece myself. |
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