• A link to a webinar: Day after Day, In the Studio, a webinar from May 23rd. 2020.

  • Artist Statement – A general context for my recent work. (2020)

     I often recall a  childhood memory of a family heirloom: a botanical field  guidebook for wildflowers and mushrooms printed in Germany in1906. I still have these books  amongst my belongings. I imagined my family, father, grandmother and grandfather using the guide while walking in the woods, spotting a flower or mushroom, then pairing the object with its printed image, with the German name, the Latin name and feeling a sense of accomplishment: of order and knowledge. I ask if mapping information is indeed a way of knowing that is congruent with the way the world is? I came to acknowledge the gap between the mechanics of knowledge based on learning versus the experiential moment when the senses are triggered to wonder: Does knowledge and experience contribute to each other? These two disparate ways of knowing informed my early work.

    The work was topographical, mounted on the floor with large corresponding drawings on the wall. I juxtaposed object with image in the hopes of provoking  the viewer to find logical systems of organizing the work. This two- and three-dimensional work format is an inquiry into the tension between seeing and understanding, looking, interpreting and translating. The underlying idea was my observation that organized information may produce a misguided sense of knowledge.

    Additionally, I explore our gaze onto nature as a place of rest and refuge from the chaos of the civilized world. I have researched the Renaissance and Golden Age painter/scholars who painted the still life and engaged in the practice of  documenting the botanical world: it was a recording of their interpretation and attitude of nature and its relation to humanity.