Advanced Fiber Studio (Highlights)
I create mixed media art that explores ethnology, history and women's issues. These themes appear in various degrees and myriad interpretations in my collages and paintings and have arisen from several experiences and influences in my life and education.
My most recent work was inspired by my time teaching and traveling in Nepal last year. Living and working in a developing country with a rich spiritual heritage opened up a new way of ruminating on the world around me, and has greatly increased my desire to create art that explores touchstones of cultural identity from the everyday to the symbolic. I taught art to children in remote villages and visited numerous historical and religious sights.
It was when I was standing in front of thirty Nepalese students in a tiny, windowless classroom employing art as a tool to teach English that I understood how powerful the dialogue I had with students and villagers was in creating an entirely new way of thinking and seeing myself and influencing the art I made. Nepal was the ideal place for me to investigate the vicissitudes of a foreign society and then produce art which speaks of these various issues through the filter of my eyes.