Word and image are my obsession. Both invoke emotion, prompt examination, provoke questions. Each is a half of the whole. Each gains strength from the other. As an artist, I work with mixed media: wood, Mylar, Plexiglas, fabric, paper, paint, film, and resin. Sometimes my projects are 2D, sometimes 3D. I enjoy the feel of the work in my hands; the bend and shape of emotion.

As a writer, I look for the words, the phrases that create image, a visual story that embeds the reader within.  Very often, one of those words or phrases “sticks” and translates into a visual display. If I had to categorize my current bodies of work, written and visual, I would define them as an examination of “wrongs”. I talk about the dark things, the hidden. I talk about secrets.

This is a theme inherent in this year’s visual works. My earlier works—The Forgotten and Nursery Rhymes—spoke to forms of eugenics and how societal standards deal with human imperfection.  Later works narrowed that focus to girls and women, but my examination expanded to include how women seek perfection and the outcome in that search, as in What to Wear and Look at Me Repulsive. Inherent in those works is the same notion of societal standards blindly accepted without question. 

That theme continues in my current body of work but delves deeper into the secret world of women. These are intensely personal topics which come from my experience, but are also a vast shared experience. As the thought processes evolved, I began to understand that behind the production of these pieces, I was constructing a deeper, implicit commentary. I’ve realized that, unknowingly, these are a visual representation of Michel Foucault’s theories involving the relationships between women, power, sexuality, and the institutions of law, religion, education, and government.

Through this process, I’ve come to realize that my knowledge of wrongs had still somehow remained “on the surface”.  Only as I come to the end do I understand.