Artist Statement

Latest version of an "official artist statement" instead of the ongoing random thoughts I usually explore here:

Right now my art examines the links between language and architecture. We build bridges like we build sentences. Our ancestors built thousands of grammars, many lost forever. Syntax provides structure and stability to concepts, as do flying buttresses for giant Cathedrals. One difference: the particular is very important to me in architecture, while language, ever-changing, -growing, and abstract, is amazing to me. Individual written works, such as historical documents or highly acclaimed books, are important and relatively immutable in much the same manner as great landmarks are, but language is used in a very fluid manner, while we do not go around building and tearing down with the same ease as we write emails or texts. Perhaps my feelings are also because my linguistic education is more complete than my architectural. I do get some of the same deeper understanding with the structures of cathedrals. Apse, processional, Greek cross, Latin cross, etc operate as a visual grammar to me.

The physical structures we live among shape our experiences. The structural components of place are a major concern of my work. I work from on-site photographs and drawings. Three dimensional buildings become flat works, and are then realized in sculptural form. I draw on my own ancestry, with influences lying all across Europe, and I always consider the paradox of my place and life in America. We have built an extension of Europe in many ways, and we want to deny our connections and declare autonomy, even as we recreate Europe here.

When I draw and print and layer, I am often guided by the lessons I learned while I was studying artist’s books with Jeff Rathermel. As you read a book, every page except for the one you are looking at is hidden. Translucent pages or pages with holes in them create layers that add meaning to the images or text on every page. In a painting, the color of the underpainting continues to influence the final result long after it has been completely covered.

I began writing poetry, one poem a night, at age twelve. I am very interested in language and how it influences our perceptions of reality, and defines our attitudes, politics, and daily lives. My studies of French, Spanish, Italian and Irish Gaelic shape my thoughts and attitudes. I use language in my art, and struggle with how art functions as a form of communication in such a different way from spoken or written language.

A lot of my thought process is influenced by the museums I visited during my semester abroad in Italy. I lived for 5 months in Tuscany, surrounded by very real, tangible evidence of centuries of human labor, and returned home with an obsession with the visual wealth and culture of Medieval and renaissance Italy and Europe. I began making wall pieces and plaques modeled after the fragments I saw in museums as well as the offerings left on cathedral walls near statues of the Virgin Mary. I layered text in Italian and English, hiding and covering my words, smearing white clay and black stain over the native terracotta. Recently, I have done a lot of work with decorative symbols which I copied in museums from paintings in Europe. I am interested in decoration as message, drawing and painting decorative rococo adornment as my subject. The decorations on women’s dresses, the markings put on the frames of paintings, and the floral patterns carved into stone blocks in Cathedral walls all became part of my personal lexicon