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.

My work typically manifests in a printed medium--artist books, zine projects, chapbooks-- as well as occasional exhibits and installations. Over the years, these projects have constellated into longer manuscripts of poetry/prose hybrid work.  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.