Each series of work has its own statement. You can read more about each series here. These series include artist books, three dimensional prints, excavations, sustainable papermaking and artist in residence works.
Artwork Series and Residency Statements
* CNN reports nearly 130,000 unaccompanied migrant children entered the U.S. in 2022.
This series reevaluates the kinds of histories that are told. Where are you really from and how did the journey impact your family?
Vintage travelogues with pochoir images. Stencils cut from childrens’ books to create a new narrative and challenge the stories we were told.
Capri is a souvenir with pochoir stencils cut from Brittanica Junior Encyclopedia 4-C 1968,both inherited and part of my family history.
In Loving Memory is a series of books honoring extinct birds and pinups. Screenprint and transfer prints layered on paper create an overlapping narrative of our obsession with the pretty things we collect. Each tragic tale is unique, many were wiped out due to human activity. Prints are hand stitched into repurposed funeral guestbooks noting the date of extinction. They were exploited for their beauty and revered in death making them icons.
St Agnes layered with Jean Crane from the Pin Up Saints series
I was researching saints for my students and became curious about the passive poses of the saints in the images. They reminded me of pin up posters from the 50’s. I started making transparent layers using Photoshop and then created translucent layers with transparencies and resin. The layers are suspended over another print, mounted on a wood panel. They are beautiful and reverential.
Metamorphosis installation AIR gallery
Metamorphosis (RedLine residency)
Participating in residency programs allows me to balance the need to work in a studio with the need to be involved. Artwork in the installation evolved through collaboration with RedLiners and my Lynden Sculpture Garden artist-in-residence partner, Pat Hidson. This exhibition celebrates the conclusion of a one year residency at the Lynden Sculpture Garden (May 30 2015-2016) and marks my 7th and final year as a Mentoring Artist at RedLine Milwaukee. The Print Shop lured me to RedLine in 2009 and continues to be a source of inspiration and refuge.
An old birch tree was harvested from the birch grove and anchored at the top of the stairs to bring a little of the Lynden into our urban environment.
The Centerfold Series (Lynden Sculpture Garden Residency)
Butterflies are a symbol of nature. They are lithe, beautiful, and graceful like the women in the centerfold images. Creating books is a daily ritual and ecological investigation. Each book is a specimen, hand- made individually, but displayed as part of a collection. I created one book per day to mark the residency and the passing of time.
The Centerfold series explores body image and unrealistic ideals and expectations. Repurposed pages from text books and religious references examine sources of information and authority. The books also symbols of transformation, representing the need for change and the need for courage.
Three Dimensional Prints
Most prints are on paper and paper is malleable and has the flexibility to take on many forms. Creating dimensional prints is a fun process and there are many resources online for artists to incorporate and personalize depending on the concept and the desired result. Dimensional examples include origami, pop-ups pages and books, intimate and subtle dimensional prints, artist’s books, architectural models, sculptural forms, and repetition of the same dimensional form many times. We will focus on intimate, sculptural and repetition of dimensional prints.
City Books
Travel is an antidote for stale studio practice. This series holds the memories and discoveries of each place.
The book is a source of knowledge. Ephemera from travel is incorporated. Transfer processes layered on cut paper to replicate personal memories of my favorite cities. City Books are travel journals and a link between art and life.
Bed of Nails
An analysis of our foreign policy debacle. I thought I was making a memorial to 9/11 until I double-checked the newspaper and realized that it was from 1993. Generations have been impacted by a never-ending war.
Sanctuary
Creating a safe place for children.The Archdiocese of Milwaukee provides support for Teachers dealing with immigration issues and the impact on students. The Catholic Church in the United States is an immigrant Church with a long history of embracing diverse newcomers and providing assistance and pastoral care to immigrants, migrants, refugees, and people on the move. Our Church has responded to Christ’s call for us to “welcome the stranger among us,” for in this encounter with the immigrant, the migrant, and the refugee in our midst, we encounter Christ.http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/immigration/
Endangered
Pamphlet stitch books, found objects, metal and thread
Climate Change is causing rapid extinction of vulnerable creatures.
Sea levels are rising and oceans are becoming warmer. Longer, more intense droughts threaten crops, wildlife and freshwater supplies. From polar bears in the Arctic to marine turtles off the coast of Africa, our planet’s diversity of life is at risk from the changing climate.
Climate change poses a fundamental threat to the places, species and people’s livelihoods WWF works to protect. To adequately address this crisis we must urgently reduce carbon pollution and prepare for the consequences of global warming, which we are already experiencing.
https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/effects-of-climate-change
Venus In Transit
Contemplating the wonder of the universe and something I will not see again in my lifetime.
NEW YORK – It’s something no one alive today will likely ever see again: The planet Venus crossing the sun — a small, black dot moving across the fiery face of our nearest star.
The transit of Venus across the sun is one of the rarest celestial sights visible from Earth, one that wowed scientists and amateur observers around the world Tuesday (June 5). The event, arguably the most anticipated skywatching display of the year, marked the last time Venus will cross the sun (as seen from Earth) for 105 years.
Only seven Venus transits have been witnessed since the invention of the telescope 400 years ago, and you’d have a long wait for the next one. It won’t happen again until Dec. 11, 2117.
https://www.space.com/16024-venus-transit-2012-skywatchers-rejoice.html
Monument Series
I have been using current events in my Monument series to honor the environment and victims of tragedies. I gather images, articles, visit sites, take photos and keep it all in my journal. Each work prompts the viewer to make historical or contextual associations-to think about what it means to encounter this story at this moment.
How are people remembered, forgotten, or altered over time?
The power of the art of public engagement is it makes us see things we don’t want to.
The viewer must take the time to discover the meaning.
More of this series can be seen in the Artist Books Gallery.