My work varies a great deal. But underlying it all are a handful of preoccupations -- layers, the elasticity of time, reflections and transparency, and the connections between earth and air and our place in a circle of life and death. I like storytelling and developing ideas over many months. After twenty years of drawing and painting, my mediums had a growth spurt and now include video, puppetry, text, sculpture, photography and games. I allow my imagination and subject matter to dictate materials and the final format of each exhibition. Whatever the final work, it's intent is to be experiential and meaningful.
INSTALLATIONS
PLACES
Created as a site-specific installation for Westminster College’s “Window Gallery” in Salt Lake City, Utah, PLACES tells a story about existing in many places at one time. Covering two, 450-foot floors, the story’s characters are hand-sewn puppets, averaging 7 feet in height and/or wingspan. Layering, transparency and reflection are important aspects of the installation, with carefully consideration taken of trees, sky and houses reflected in the glass. The show ran for four months, day and night.
MAKING TALES
Like Alice in Wonderland, this installation drops into the rabbit hole of a world from a small girl’s point of view. The child’s wanderings, meanderings and silliness reveal that before knowing fairytale s such as Cinderella or Little Red Riding Hood, the world is filled with wonder and limitlessness. It is a time before the influence of gender expectation, prejudice and judgments. Created at the time of and with awareness of Kiki Smith’s installation “Telling Tales,” about fairytales from a feminist perspective, MAKING TALES -- the video, photographic wall (9’ x 15’) and sculptural pieces -- exhibited in Gallery One of the 80 Washington Square Gallery in New York City.
PIPPI IN WONDERLAND
“Transplaced” to Utah after nearly 20 years in NYC, this drawing series was a vehicle for understanding new landscapes (shopping malls, McMansions, box stores, SUVs and ultimately the grapping of space and natural resources and the call to battle to protect these possessions). A Pippi Longstocking trickster/marionette was handcrafted to be a guide, through word and picture, to “America.” She is her own Pippi, faceless but wearing a golden-brown-skinned mask. Each drawing is approximately 2.5’x 6’ on vellum or denril with mixed medium. They were originally created for the Sundance Film Festival to be shown in the Musician’s Room during the Film Festival in Park City, Utah. They have shown in other galleries as well.
I’LL NEVER BE SO FAR AWAY
Sequester in the studio over a nine month period after my mother’s death, I worked solely on these drawings and supporting writings, restricting the size of the drawings. Each is 17 inches square. The materials are non-archival. Some images and words will disappear with time as do the thoughts and emotions around loss. The installation includes over 200 drawings, each numbered, installed in sequence and hung so viewers may walk within them,. The piece was first exhibited at the Salt Lake Art Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, as part of a show entitled, “Transcendence.”
LANGUAGE
In a 2,000 square foot, warehouse gallery, The Artspace Forum Gallery, n Salt Lake City, Utah, this exhibition explored language from many angles. It included some 100 works of paintings, photographs, a puppet, drawings, sculpture, a game in line/language communication, and a video in three languages.
SHROUD
Grief is a feeling everyone encounters but how it is shared, acknowledged, or even suppressed is as individual as a snowflake. This installation brings together the voices of many people, each of whom has lost one or more family members, from grandparents to children. By placing the voices together on separate monitors running continuously and simultaneously, a chorus is created and out of that a community of commonality. Ironically the cries of sadness, vulnerability and pain open a view to the profound and abiding capacity of people to love deeply. Commissioned by Brolley Arts, an arts organization in Salt Lake City, Utah, SHROUD was first presented as part of a group show at Westminster College, Salt Lake City. It later was expanded and traveled to the Central Utah Art Center in Ephraim, Utah. The installation was created to responds to the community where it is exhibited by incorporating interviews with people from that community. This enables the piece to represent the local religious and cultural beliefs around dying and grieving.
PUBLIC ART/ PERMANENT PIECES
Public art pieces are located in the Human Genetics Center, Research Park, Salt Lake City, Utah.; the Humanities Building, University of Utah, and the Red Hook Pier One, Red Hook, New York. The Marriott Library, University of Utah, holds in it’s permanent collection drawings for a book by Salman Rushdie titled, “Firebird.”
NEW WORKS
45
45 consists of less than 45 drawings – 22 and counting – which observe shifting thoughts over time. Like meditation, it creates awareness around the movement of the mind from the profound to the absurd with a lot of chatter in between. Each drawing is approximately 7’ x 7’, on brown wrapping paper, gessoed either in black, white or neutral. The palatte is limited to black and white, with an occasional hint of color. This piece has not yet been exhibited.
WHERE/ABOUT
Where/about, the newest adventure, is a response to moving to a new country. Looking again at place, this exploration combines the literal and physical with the visceral and virtual. Maps of roads traveled in daily life, maps of memory, and maps of geometry begin this story of existence in place and time. The installation will include video, storytelling and a participatory web component along with drawings, paintings and a game.
.
INSTALLATIONS
PLACES
Created as a site-specific installation for Westminster College’s “Window Gallery” in Salt Lake City, Utah, PLACES tells a story about existing in many places at one time. Covering two, 450-foot floors, the story’s characters are hand-sewn puppets, averaging 7 feet in height and/or wingspan. Layering, transparency and reflection are important aspects of the installation, with carefully consideration taken of trees, sky and houses reflected in the glass. The show ran for four months, day and night.
MAKING TALES
Like Alice in Wonderland, this installation drops into the rabbit hole of a world from a small girl’s point of view. The child’s wanderings, meanderings and silliness reveal that before knowing fairytale s such as Cinderella or Little Red Riding Hood, the world is filled with wonder and limitlessness. It is a time before the influence of gender expectation, prejudice and judgments. Created at the time of and with awareness of Kiki Smith’s installation “Telling Tales,” about fairytales from a feminist perspective, MAKING TALES -- the video, photographic wall (9’ x 15’) and sculptural pieces -- exhibited in Gallery One of the 80 Washington Square Gallery in New York City.
PIPPI IN WONDERLAND
“Transplaced” to Utah after nearly 20 years in NYC, this drawing series was a vehicle for understanding new landscapes (shopping malls, McMansions, box stores, SUVs and ultimately the grapping of space and natural resources and the call to battle to protect these possessions). A Pippi Longstocking trickster/marionette was handcrafted to be a guide, through word and picture, to “America.” She is her own Pippi, faceless but wearing a golden-brown-skinned mask. Each drawing is approximately 2.5’x 6’ on vellum or denril with mixed medium. They were originally created for the Sundance Film Festival to be shown in the Musician’s Room during the Film Festival in Park City, Utah. They have shown in other galleries as well.
I’LL NEVER BE SO FAR AWAY
Sequester in the studio over a nine month period after my mother’s death, I worked solely on these drawings and supporting writings, restricting the size of the drawings. Each is 17 inches square. The materials are non-archival. Some images and words will disappear with time as do the thoughts and emotions around loss. The installation includes over 200 drawings, each numbered, installed in sequence and hung so viewers may walk within them,. The piece was first exhibited at the Salt Lake Art Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, as part of a show entitled, “Transcendence.”
LANGUAGE
In a 2,000 square foot, warehouse gallery, The Artspace Forum Gallery, n Salt Lake City, Utah, this exhibition explored language from many angles. It included some 100 works of paintings, photographs, a puppet, drawings, sculpture, a game in line/language communication, and a video in three languages.
SHROUD
Grief is a feeling everyone encounters but how it is shared, acknowledged, or even suppressed is as individual as a snowflake. This installation brings together the voices of many people, each of whom has lost one or more family members, from grandparents to children. By placing the voices together on separate monitors running continuously and simultaneously, a chorus is created and out of that a community of commonality. Ironically the cries of sadness, vulnerability and pain open a view to the profound and abiding capacity of people to love deeply. Commissioned by Brolley Arts, an arts organization in Salt Lake City, Utah, SHROUD was first presented as part of a group show at Westminster College, Salt Lake City. It later was expanded and traveled to the Central Utah Art Center in Ephraim, Utah. The installation was created to responds to the community where it is exhibited by incorporating interviews with people from that community. This enables the piece to represent the local religious and cultural beliefs around dying and grieving.
PUBLIC ART/ PERMANENT PIECES
Public art pieces are located in the Human Genetics Center, Research Park, Salt Lake City, Utah.; the Humanities Building, University of Utah, and the Red Hook Pier One, Red Hook, New York. The Marriott Library, University of Utah, holds in it’s permanent collection drawings for a book by Salman Rushdie titled, “Firebird.”
NEW WORKS
45
45 consists of less than 45 drawings – 22 and counting – which observe shifting thoughts over time. Like meditation, it creates awareness around the movement of the mind from the profound to the absurd with a lot of chatter in between. Each drawing is approximately 7’ x 7’, on brown wrapping paper, gessoed either in black, white or neutral. The palatte is limited to black and white, with an occasional hint of color. This piece has not yet been exhibited.
WHERE/ABOUT
Where/about, the newest adventure, is a response to moving to a new country. Looking again at place, this exploration combines the literal and physical with the visceral and virtual. Maps of roads traveled in daily life, maps of memory, and maps of geometry begin this story of existence in place and time. The installation will include video, storytelling and a participatory web component along with drawings, paintings and a game.
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