My work has been described as “some otherworldly mash-up of quilts and paintings and sculpture and something else altogether.”  That “something else” is what I aim to discover through my work process. 

My practice has developed through experimentation with a variety of processes and materials – felt, foil, and now paper.  The play of materials and process, the conversation of materials with form, marks and color: these are my motivations for making art. I approach all of my work as abstract collage: compositions of differing elements that cohere into unique final forms.  I work with layering, contrast, texture, and movement, as well as with mystery -- chance is an essential part of my process. Although my work is always abstract, my inspirations are wide-ranging -- from nature to fashion, world events, even outer space – and mostly hidden.  While some recent work has moved toward narrative abstraction, the primary driver and motivation is my engagement with the materials themselves.

My current work consists of two distinct series that I continue to work on simultaneously.  The Stories series invites speculation about the seen and unseen.  Each work begins with a single gesture but with no preconception of final form. The Orbits series is unlike anything I’ve worked with before: it is based on a single form, the circle, and explores it in many variations. I see these two directions as related but dichotomous.  The stories evolve from something inchoate and find their form. The orbits begin with a known form, and then evolve into unknown variations. These two series developed from an initial collage in which I experimented with a new set of materials.  In addition to my primary use of printed magazine papers, I have been creating “prepared” papers, through rust and tea printing and a solvent process that transforms magazine papers into unexpected prints, neither of which allow total control over the results. 

I begin a collage by laying down an initial paper and then build it from there, “finding” the color palette and compositional focus as I go.  I layer the work with borrowed and original papers, as well as image transfer, ink or acrylic washes, and mark-making and toning with colored pencil and graphite. All of my recent work is on a support of translucent vellum.  The brittle yet billowy quality of the sheets appeals to me like a skin.  If the sheet buckles with the addition of water-based media, that creates a new texture that I can use.  The translucency allows me to work on both sides of the sheets, enhancing the illusion of depth while offering another opportunity for chance results.  The size and orientation of the support has become consistent over time and relates to my physical size and working space.