My work blurs the lines between high and low art by using everyday objects and materials. I draw with #2 pencil or sharpie. I paint with house paint. I create my painting surfaces with fabric, plastic bags, toilet paper tubes, or scrap paper.  My installations include these same materials; they are familiar to me and ground me in my history. We live in a mass-producing, consuming, and purging society. It is a part of who I am; who we all are. I want the viewer to investigate what materials are used to create the artwork and change how they think about our everyday objects. Life is amazing today and every day, but we get bogged down with what we think is mundane. We need to see the magic that surrounds us.

 

Currently in my relief paintings I have been using folded fabric as a means to explore texture, line and movement. I have used curtains, blankets, and scraps from other projects.  The fabric I use has been collected by me for various reasons. Different fabrics allow for experimentation with multiple textures and paint applications. Traditionally in painting, fabric is a common still life subject; but instead of painting the illusion of the fabric, I am painting the fabric itself. This abstracts the subject matter for inspection, exploration, and transformation. I am also interested in the traditional associations with feminine crafts. For my installations, I may or may not paint the objects, but the principles I use in my paintings or drawings are the same.

 

After having my first child I began a drawing series with #2 pencil and accumulating circles. I added color by using Sharpie brand markers. I think of the drawings as landscapes that symbolize life. We are small pieces to a larger whole of humanity, and as human beings we are ourselves whole, but also made up of many smaller pieces. The accumulation of a small common mark, a circle, creates something vast as an endless landscape. Each mark may seem insignificant yet it is necessary to create the whole. A single mark can change the entire work by a direction shift. My motivation for this work is the same; to look deeper and transform the common, the repetition of mark making and common materials unite the work.