Obsession.

Infatuation.

attraction compulsion preoccupation fixation.

Current Statement (In Progress)

My work deals with the tension between the beautiful and the grotesque. I make fabric assemblage pieces that are constructed formally and reference the body and discuss various other conceptual ideas about beauty.

My early works were large-scale atmospheric abstract paintings. I have always embraced color, and was told by a professor once that my color choices bordered on obscenity. I still don't really have any clue what that really means, but I know that in reaction to that, I tried to think of ways to make my work more obnoxious. I started working with metallic spray paints, and encrusting my paintings in glitter. I have always been attracted to the tasteless and tacky.

My work has since manifested itself as fabric collage. I spend my ideation time working my way through fabric warehouses, estate sales, and thrift stores, searching for materials that both attract and repulse me.

I am a compulsive list-maker. I stockpile lists of vocabulary words, always searching for opposites and contradictions within these lists, and I build my work accordingly. In the same way that my work is a chain of words, my work is also a conglomeration of pieces of silk and muslin held together by thread and straight pins.

Comfort, warmth, hot, cold, harmony, discord, sexy, ugly, dirty, precious, abject, clean, luxurious, tasteless, tacky, excessive, stretchy, smooth, compressed, loose, tight, and bunched, nouns and verbs and adjectives. I use these words to construct the often-ambiguous meaning of my work.

Currently I look to the work of Paul McCarthy, Nancy Davidson, Mark Bradford, Annette Messager, Sylvie Fleury, and Yayoi Kusama. All of these artists deal with various levels of dirt and grime, taste and tastelesness, and excesses of all of these things.

Portfolio

November

I am back to work, and finally feeling focused enough. Everything else from this semester has seemed like an incomplete, random thought. My corresponding thesis writing had been going the same way. Somehow, some clarity has come to me. Maybe it is the cold...maybe nothing that poetic. 

Currently, I am dealing with a series of words that led to this work: attraction/repulsion, grotesque beauty, excess, taste and tastelessness. 

'sack'

varying dimensions, approx. 45"high x 34"wide

mixed fabric, fiberfill, thread

'sack' detail

'trio' detail

'trio' work in progress, varying dimensions (in-progress installation....VERY in progress)

mixed fabric, fiberfill, thread

'trio' detail

studio self portrait, November 14th, 2008

Write up in Twin Cities Luxury Magazine: July 2008

This month I am involved in a group show at the Burnett Gallery located in the Chambers Luxury Hotel-A short write up was published in Twin Cities Luxury Magazine:

approx. 30x45", varying widths at different points

silk taffeta, tulle, misc. acrylic fabric, polyfil

deconstructed dress/absence of body

Older Work:

1/2 of the mid-program review installation

larger piece: silk, muslin, batting, thread, acrylic paint, ink

8 small works: canvas, thread, paper

installation view

varying sizes

silk, taffeta, thread, muslin, batting, polyfil, acrylic paint

alternate installation view

silk, batting, muslin, thread, acrylic paint, ink

silk, batting, muslin, thread, acrylic paint, ink