artist statement

I am interested in the ways visual elements and text work together to tell a story--sometimes linear, sometimes circular or fragmented.  My education and early career was devoted to words and language. I came to visual arts later--primarily book and paper related forms--collage, assemblage, printmaking, book sculpture.   Over the past decade,  I've worked to fold both visual and written elements into my process in new ways, including recent forays into video and digital media.

My aesthetic approach explores certain cultural veins--gothicism, horror, surrealism.  My themes closely align with my slant as a feminist --knowledge and danger, domestic spaces (safe and unsafe), suburban unrest, women as muse vs. creators, language and the body, mothers & daughters, nature vs. civilization.   My subject matter reflects ongoing passions and obsessions --victoriana, sideshows & carnivals, zodiac signs, horror movies, taxidermy, monstrous women, science fiction, mythology,  fairy tales, ghost stories, urban legends.  I love that which juxtaposes the beautiful and the terrible, the pretty and the horrific. I am also interested in the midwest as both place and concept, and much of my work finds its roots there. 

Stylistically, I am interested in fragmentation, polyvocality, and distortion of narrative.  I tend to work in the grey area between poetry and prose. The tension between the visual and the written and their combined effect.  I love appropriated and misused forms--epistolaries, footnotes, indices.   In current projects , I am fascinated by the possibilities of the lyric essay as medium for memoir.  I am very much about utilizing vintage ephemera, found elements,  and collage in both my written and visual work., which manifests both in my mediums and my approach to composition.