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Conceptual, observational and materials studies and artworks.
from A Recent Myth series
oil on cradled birch wood panel, 12”x12”x2”
oil on cradled birch wood panel, 12”x12”x2”
Laser cut x-ray of artist's hand on cradled wood panel, wheat, acrylic. 10"x6"x1"
Exemplar for visual art design challenge "100 Units", Fall, 2017.
Exemplar for visual art design challenge "100 Units", Fall, 2017.
X-Ray of artist's hand (January 2016) printed on w/c paper, chalk pastel and cut-outs. Exemplar for visual art design challenge, "Inside/Outside". 12"x18". February 2016.
Summer, 2017.
Acrylic palette knife painting, 8"x12". Exemplar for advanced visual art course, 2016.
Teaching art provides me with a constant source of creative inspiration for my own art making. Some of these artworks take the form of traditional instructional aides and exemplars that are part and parcel of an art teacher's toolkit. Others are my personal responses to interactions on form and/or content that come from working in a collaborative studio environment with the inspiring student artists and faculty at St. Andrew's Episcopal School, my teaching home. Sometimes I simply find art in the debris left from the productive energy and experimentation that swirls around me every day in my role as an art educator. This visual journal is a way for me to capture, reflect on and share some of the intersections between my personal art, my teaching and art of the classroom.
Digital Photograph. A studio sink left uncleaned following an unscheduled fire drill
Spray Paint on Paper, 4'x6'. Prepared as a project exemplar for my portfolio development class, I did it in a big hurry in my home studio on a day I was feeling ambushed by personal and professional chores. Stenciled images of dishrags, brooms and dust scoops, spray bottles shooting soap bombs, all tumbling in chaos above heads -- my heads I think, yelling in frustration and exasperation. I was feeling the title the whole time I was making it!
Pen and Colored Pencil on Construction Paper, 9"x12"
I included a few "mistakes" in this exemplar done for my beginning drawing class as discussion points, and my astute students found many more than I'd planned. This deepens the class conversation: we had more technical points to consider in terms of drawing, and my status as a learner is more apparent to my empathetic students.
Paper & Found Object Collage on Cedar Box. 4"x8"x6"
Blown ink, charcoal and pastel on paper. 12"x8".
Torn, folded and sewn 300 lb BFK
Charcoal, ashes from personal journal, and pastel on colored paper, 12"x12"
This piece is the result of a collaboration with two colleagues, Liz Kiingi and Evan Morgan, master teachers both, for an English course they taught. Dealing with metaphors from The Great Gatsby, students were asked to first write down a list of personal dreams and aspirations. Students then burned the paper on which this assignment was printed. They used the ashes of these "goals" to create unexpected new visual representations of what might come out of such an experience, interpreting themes from The Great Gatsby, visual motifs arising from their art, and finally in written reflections of how such challenges might be met in their own lives.
Oil. 36"x36"
Oil on canvas. 30"x36"
Oil. 36"x54" private commission
Icon Alter Piece Series. Oil on hinged board. 18"x24" flat
Oil. 5"x7" sold
Oil. 24"x30" sold
Icon Alter Piece Series. Oil on hinged board. 18"x30" flat
Oil. sold
Oil. Dyptch - 10"x30" sold
Oil. sold
Oil. 12"x24" sold
Oil. sold
Oil. sold
Icon Alter Piece Series. Oil on hinged board. 10"x24" flat sold
Layered imagery and meaning using night projections of personal paintings and family archives on barns of family farms.
Exploring human connection to the land has always been a central inspiration for making art. Growing up on a family farm, my early work attempts to record the simplicity, balance and spirituality that may be found in natural and cultivated landscapes through that traditional genre. Over time, however, my work has become more narrative, and with this series, Layers, involves an attempt to include the voices of the people who live and toil on this ground, past, present and future. I want to pull these people back into direct view, into direct interaction with their progeny, through projections of family archives, my own figurative art works, and by including myself and others who connect with this place as part of a visual collage. I am trying to layer us all back together onto an original canvas, on the farmland, on the structures built there. I have added digital technology in combination with the more gentle illumination of the night to coax out the mystery, the conversation between the land and its inhabitants, and hear combined voices through these pieces. I am indebted to those family members, now gone, whose own instinct and artistry captured some of the original imagery I have included in this work.
I see this series as the continuation of an ongoing personal investigation that is propelled by a broader concern for how we, as humans, view our work as stewards of the land and our world, and the interwoven future we as a species share here on Earth.
digital print on arches w/c paper, 16 by 16 inches
digital print on arches w/c paper, 16 by 12 inches
digital print on arches w/c paper, 12 by 18 inche
digital print, 12 by 14 inches
digital image of personal artwork projected on family farm building with artist, digital print on arches w/c paper, 12 by 16 inches
digital print on arches w/c paper, 12 by 16 inches
digital print on arches w/c paper, 12 by 16 inches
digital print on arches w/c paper, 12 x 16 inches
This series represents an investigation of the metaphors presented by bones: the basic internal structures of our physical beings, young and strong, older and hollow, broken, reformed, pushing up and out into new forms. As I explore my personal human heritage, what my presence may add, and its relationship to the future, I see making "new bones" as not only possible, but important. The prototypes of these sculptures were made with stone cast plaster I didn't want to throw away following an art unit with some of my advanced art students. With their help I got the plaster in the ground before it dried. I am motivated by the connections created by this collaboration between artists, students and teacher, between real and metaphorical bones -- those we stand on or newly made, each one unique, all connected through time and imagination.
New Bones 1-7 (1-4 shown): Single stone cast plaster sculptures from excavated earthen cavity molds.
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Eulogy for a Family Farm: Mixed Media
stonecast plaster sculpture with earth and pebbles, 8 by 4 by 8 inches
stonecast plaster sculpture with earth and pebbles, 7 by 4 by 5 inches
stonecast plaster sculpture with earth and pebbles, 6 by 4 by 6 inches
stonecast plaster sculpture with earth and pebbles, 8 by 3 by 4 inches
