Artist Statement - 2010

For the past decade my work has involved concepts such as portraiture, gender roles, performativity of the body, intimacy, and introspection. I have always been fascinated by the emotional language of performed actions and how these actions and gestures work within the social realm as an experiential discourse and form of public archive. In 2007, I created a self-portrait series of color etchings, exploring gender role associations present within the actions of putting on make-up. These prints titled: Lipschtick, Rouge, and Superficial highlight the private social spaces which are insidiously connected to identity associations and gender roles.

Other projects such as, Collaborative Print Quilt and Pod worked to reinvent feminist imagery of the 1960s and 70s through participatory collaboration and found object recontextualization. In another project (2009) titled, Pink Play, I fabricated a life-sized sculpture of a voyeur figure, covered in pink faux fur, peering at a range of historicized nude figures in an installed and staged domestic space. This installation was created as a means for participants to investigate the perpetuated societal gaze.

My last project (2010) titled, Revisiting Dickinson was an installation of tableaux sculptural forms, reminiscent of plant-like stamen and pistol as well as minimalized figures and bee hives. The installation was the culminate product of my explorations in revising several poems by American author Emily Dickinson. The forms became manifest as the symbolic and simultaneous presence of bee and clover within a selection of Dickinson works as well as notions of pollination and dissemination.

I work with a variety of traditional and found materials; employing drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, digital photography, video, and installation as it works within the context of my content exploration. My studio practices are driven by compulsion, a longing for tactile manipulation of materials, and a need for deep introspection. Within modernity, I situate myself within a post-structuralist sphere, a feminist critique, and spaces which are socially based. My work is heavily influenced by artists such as: Eva Hesse, Yvonne Rainer, Martha Rosler, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Sharon Hayes, Louise Bourgeois, Margaret Harrison, Faith Wilding, Hannah Wilke, Ann Hamilton, Judy Pfaff, Yoko Ono, and others working within the framework of postmodernism and its subsidiary genres.

My current project is an exploration of social spaces and the cultural structures and conditions which frame them. Within this work are nuances of seemingly divulged secrets, introversion, and intimacy framed by interactions between public spaces and participants; inviting participants to be their own producers within the context of experiential art. I am working with two site specific architectural fixtures. One is through the inclusion of social noises projected on an installed trumpet speaker directly behind an outdoor bench, the other is an installed surveillance system in the gallery which is displayed on a monitor directly in front of an installed indoor bench. Video surveillance will stream continually, from around the gallery on the monitor. Real-time surveillance of movement toward the bench and monitor will be triggered through a motion detector, causing participants to see themselves interacting in the immediate space (rather than in the other areas of gallery surveillance). Specific surveillance from the exhibition reception within the gallery will be captured and recorded for later intermittent playback along with real-time capture of activity.