"Beautiful like the chance meeting on a dissection table of a sewing machine and an umbrella."
- Comte de Lautréamont
Permanence is an illusion and power an apparition. After enough time passes, the most any of us can hope for is to leave artifacts behind.
With ordinary materials my work addresses the fleeting nature of power and a lack of permanence with both the tangible and metaphysical. Inspiration is garnered from craft practices, Americana relics, eastern religious philosophies, and handmade textiles. We impose a lot of metaphors on objects and possessions, which affects my chosen iconography. Flags, maps, vases, quilt patterns, and gravestones are altered into somewhat antagonistic forms. Questions surrounding patriotism, pride, and partisanship begin to emerge in work that is both satirical and idealistic. The results are overwhelmingly about mortality, but not exclusively dark or negative. Subtexts touch on resurrection, reincarnation, and recycling.
The work is made with commonplace materials like matches, damaged quilts, stickers, Army Surplus fabrics, temporary tattoos, and other domicile goods. I am partial towards the familiar, the handmade, and fibers in hopes of making challenging subjects more accessible. There is not one mode or material that is preferred over another, but I gravitate towards soft-sculpture in addition to working with drawing, collage, photography, installation, and performance.
My upbringing in the suburbs of Detroit, a northern "Rust Belt" metropolis, combined with Southern “make do” perseverance, has had an enormous impact the work. Repetition is a predominant motif, reminiscent of assembly line manufacturing from my Detroit origins, but this is combined with the hand-made (aka woman-made), with maternal influences having grown up surrounded by quilting, needlepoint, folk art, and a mother that celebrated textiles. These personal craft based origins now address growing Nationalism, particularly in the US, motivating work that questions the notion of a “homeland” and how national identity intertwines with the individual.