ARTIST STATEMENT
I am an interdisciplinary visual artist, engaged in experimental processes exploring personal histories and the tension of paradox to create narratives expressed as photographs, sculptural objects, and bound works.
Convergence, 2022
There is a mystery to our climate that is visible yet elusive. To help elevate awareness around climate and it’s affect on us, I create charts using photographs I made of the ocean and clouds while at sea in the ITCZ. The Intertropical Convergence Zone or ITCZ (pronounced 'itch') is a narrow band of weather where the circulating trade winds of the Northern and Southern hemispheres collide. The heat released here drives the regional and global atmospheric circulation and is the birthplace of all hurricanes.
When I spent twenty seven days in the Pacific Ocean, the weather dictated my life minute by minute. I recorded the surface of the ocean and the strength of the wind hour by hour. The details I focused on in my remote location while at sea have become my pilot through an imperiled life today: wispy white cirrus float below dense blue cumulonimbus and darkness looms. The path through is interminable threatening to shift and become an iron albatross; waves are an undulating blanket with no rhythm or direction to usher. Observing and charting the dance between the open ocean and its weather I avow to their clout for holding the secrets to sustaining our anthropologic interval.
Each layered archival pigment print is hand marked to symbolize shifting but confined hurricane tracks and navigation plot lines then soaked in sea water collected at the ITCZ twenty years ago until the salt crystallizes in direct sunlight and reacts with the carbon in the inks to cause acidification.
The Tension of Flow, 2021
The Tension of Flow holds a place where both discord and grace coexist. After many years of confusion and turmoil, I felt compelled to resolve disenchantment around marriage, motherhood, and career. While trying to settle into the opposing paths as a moored mother and wife, my lifelong dreams of living untethered adventures of peril and enterprise began to drift away.
In the pursuit of bringing disparate parts of myself together and honoring the tension of my dilemma, I began to spend my time folding, crumpling, tearing, sewing, and forming photographic prints of the ocean crashing on a rocky shore.
I use lashing, hitching, and mending techniques from my sailing and mountaineering background to fashion the photographs, thread, and rope into symbolic forms and vessels.
The hands-on process allows me to express a new language without the constraints of precept. The finished pieces honor the tension of opposites that I have learned to reconcile during this tumultuous chapter of my life.
Onboard, 2015
A boat is a symbol of togetherness. Being on the same vessel means sharing the same fate. Within the first weeks of birth, my husband and I began sharing our love of life onboard our sailboat with our children. It is on a vessel, away from distractions of a fast-paced society, where we are able to slow down, get close to nature, live sparingly and spend time as a family. By sharing this lifestyle, we hoped to get them physically, mentally and spiritually onboard to live in close quarters on the open ocean as we travel.
Yet, as we navigate, we have come to realize, so far, they are just along for the ride. So I wanted to depict the romance of sailing the way we see it combined with the perspective of our children learning to live on a 38' sailboat.
The images are presented as 5x7" postcards tucked inside a hollowed out hardcover book of the novel "Dove"-the novel that originally inspired me to want to meet another sailor, start a family, and sail the world.
The re-purposed book and postcards are simple objects that exemplify the wabi-sabi philosophy, including simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy and an appreciation for the integrity of natural goods and means. This is the same philosophy we embrace living on a sailboat.
At the Edge, 2014
Keen on sailing lore and legends, I read "the romantics believed seafaring gave you a sense of nearing the eternal; it was the closest to the sublime you could experience." [Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)].
I personally experienced this while spending time at sea mostly alone for 27 days in a small sailboat and longed to recapture that unique and feeling.
Bound to land life, I chose to make this series along the coast of the vast Pacific Ocean, creating images yards from shore while my young children swam at arm's length just out of frame.
Age of Reason, 2013
As my son reached the end of his seventh year I became more attentive to his changing awareness of the world beyond himself. According to Canon Law, this is the age at which children attain the ability to reason and have moral responsibility. By his eighth year he began to navigate the world in his own way and started to examine the concepts of death, betrayal, and the complexity of being human.
I noticed a loss of innocence during this ‘Age of Reason.’ When I talked to other parents of children around the same age, I began to realize how critical a turning point this is not only for the child but for the parents too.
I explore this familial transformation utilizing inspiration from The Braque Family Triptych, a religious altarpiece, to look at the shift in domestic connections. I create portraits using contemporary families with a child who is coming of age.
The children wear a red piece of clothing as a metaphor for their familial relationship. Each child holds their favorite toy from childhood, some more closely than others, representing their readiness or hesitancy to accept their entry into the next phase of life.
The parents express their own desire to hold on, let go, or assist their child with tools they think they will need as they mature into adulthood. These are symbolized by objects such as a book for knowledge, a dog for loyalty, and a pair of owls for wisdom.
Rite of Water, 2010-2012
My children have known the mystique and danger of the ocean their entire lives. I witnessed them learning to trust their power and be at peace with their vulnerability as they went through a unique rite of passage when they were just 2 and 5 years old.
Each color panel represents the early phase or 'the cutting away' in a rite of passage. This is where they leave what is familiar and comfortable yet they appear courageous and capable.
The black and white images represent the phase where uncertainty occurs. Their perception is unclear. They are 'liminal people' in this phase which is at the margin and most often where revelation occurs.