ARTIST STATEMENT

Gears, cogs, belts, bolts, grease, smells…Suck, squeeze, bang, blow. My muse is the realm of industrial leftovers. Obsolescence. Junk yards piled with scraps – separated from their human owners – rusted metal; like bones in mass graves. Artifacts of our disposable culture. I am drawn to their physicality and decay. Machines do things mechanically. Sometimes people do that too. We humans are complex but can act without insight or self-awareness.

To me, this is the dynamic of greatest irony and inspires much of my work. The intersections of people and machines. Identity and personality. What is programmed in the social context and what is formed in private. Which are the truths that reveal our individuality and quirks and flaws.

What is progress? If we have new machines that mirror human thought, leapfrog human capabilities and emotions, are we obsolete? Decaying and rusty. My dog has a computer chip in is shoulder, my dad’s hips were titanium. Are we infinitely mutable?

As a child I spent endless joyful hours in my father’s studio workshop. He collected junk(!) and built funny mechanized playful sculptures. I watched him isolate a shape of particular beauty and fascination then watch it transformed into a featured part of something new with energy and personality. My imagination was lit up with anthropomorphic beings.

I attended The University of Kansas and studied printmaking, design, and art history. After three years of formal arts education I adventured west to begin a 20-year career as a graphic designer. But this calling, the need to make art was intense and lured me into my permanent practice.

I am a painter. I draw, I sew, I sculpt (with fabric and junk and cool stuff I find). I create art and in doing so I recreate me, only better and better.