statement
Beautiful and grotesque…alluring and repulsing…intimate and cosmic... These oppositional forces drive me continually to make sculpture. Like a cartographer
devoted to plotting uncharted territory, I map through physical materials the lived experience of a human body. The dance within cellular micro-dramas
captured in stoneware clay and fabric landscapes which are both pierced and punctuated by delicate ornamentation suggesting the celebration and
demise of flesh.
Clay and fabric speak the hybrid dialect of biology and ballet: The wall of a vessel like form…..movement inside stoneware arteries…. fluid filled tributaries and
gestures created with limbs flowing from the center out into space and time. Sheer fabric sewn in a survivalist manner….threads holding together edges that
would otherwise separate. Forms that are bewilderingly human and simultaneously tide pool like. The amplification of organic textures and figurative shapes
suggest elements of the natural world, while alluding to sensual and corporeal experiences of the human body. My sculptures create the poetic resonance of a
somatic body response in the viewer by drawing visual parallels between biological forces expressed in human tissue and, the aquatic world of the deep.
My process for building is very intuitive. I have an idea for the forms I want to create; however, I pay very specific attention to moments within the clay that arise as
I am building. I study and draw the human form, as well as geological structures to work out how I want to compose form. The coil and pinch method is employed
for constructing the hollow built forms. Stains and colored slips are sprayed onto the work while they are green-ware and also after the bisque firing. The work is
then fired to cone 6 or cone 10 in an electric kiln. Mixed media elements of fabric, metal pins, thread and resin are added post firing.