My creative work includes drawing, printmaking, sculpture, installation and architecture. I believe that insights in art are supported by a cross-disciplinary practice and I find that my work in one discipline will influence my work in another. For example my background as a builder influences my recent drawing series Follow the Nut ; I hammer the drawings and explore how force and building tools can be used to create works on paper. Printmaking has a profound influence on my drawings, many recent works use a graphite frottage method, pressure applied to transfer the qualities of an object to the surface of the page. I shift the objects beneath the page as I work. These drawings are simultaneously representational and abstract, static and dynamic. The drawings communicate tactile qualities embedded in a flat surface.
I think of my installations as three-dimensional drawings; I often use linear materials, such as ribbon and rope, to define space and form. In these works I use structural force, tension in particular, to pull a construction out of the realm of two dimensions and into the realm of three dimensions. I use tension and gravity to both build and distort form. With Motion-Line-Form and Over and Under I began working with dancers to construct the installations, to express line in movement while defining volume. My goal is to explore how force and rhythm are communicated in the human body and in human built structures.
Many of my installations focus on the way built forms relate to landscape. I notice the human tendency to impose geometric systems on the spaces we occupy. I have observed that these “geometries” are often compromised and changed by “nature” - the topography of given site, weather or gravity. I see this juxtaposition between nature and order in agricultural patterns, in maps, in computer renderings of natural forms and in textiles. In my artwork I explore this “middle ground” where nature and order meet. I often set up a contrast between my installation and its environment by using everyday materials in surprising ways and by emphasizing color, texture and geometry. Architecture has taught me to think about how fabrication and construction influence art making and how the constraints of a project (site, budget, shipping, logistics, time and available labor) can serve to inspire and stir up a creative process rather than undermine it. My goal with installation is to transform prosaic space into a charged space to dislodge myself and the viewer from the unfocused gaze we so often direct at the everyday world. The temporary nature of my installations heightens this experience.