ARTIST STATEMENT

Walking through my community inspires me to imagine multidimensional landscapes created from everyday objects.  These unconventional artifacts reflect the world we live in, consume, and fill with things.  Printed material and imagery document our existence.  Discarded objects reveal what (and who) our society values, and what gets thrown away. Through drawing, sculpture, and installation assembled around these materials, I discover their stories, their beauty, and endless adaptation.  They create worlds that seem familiar and surreal.

My work  imagines the places and spaces where the natural environment, the spiritual world, and manmade materials collide.  I am drawn to the patterns of growth and renewal I find in nature, through drawing and collage, images and textures, and the stuff of our day-to-day life. Sometimes a drawing is layered upon a collage of images, paper, and cork; other times, I assemble or forge new landscapes from melted plastics and synthetics generated by our past and present. Stretching the boundaries of the form and materials until something – or someplace – new emerges.

Pattern, repetition, and constant movement form the foundation of my work.  By twisting, tearing, melting, and re-shaping, my hands are tools to reinvent the natural and human-made elements. As we increasingly lean toward artificial materials and intelligence, my practice honors something slow, meditative, and intentional.  The layered and textured landscapes invite you to look closely, to slow down and discover the layers of materials, drawing and imagery. My intentions are to unite real human labor and real materials to motivate human connections.