Bio
BFA, 1983, New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University, NY; MFA, 1986, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Exhibitions: Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Sky Earth Gallery, Macau, China; Chicago Cultural Center; New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe; American Craft Museum, NY. Publications: 500 Figures in Clay; Ceramics and the Human Figure; Contemporary Ceramics: International Perspective; The Ceramic Process. Collections: Mobile Museum of Art, Alabama; Gresol, La Bisbal, Girona, Spain; Ceramica Sargadelos, Lugo, Spain. Awards: Southern Arts Federation Visual Arts Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts; European Ceramic Work Centre, The Netherlands; Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.
Personal Statement
There is an intentional poetic attitude in my art that allows me to work and to imagine with a sense of purpose. There is an attempt towards precision; meaning is always ambiguous and metaphorical.
Although my work appears to refer to a story, I am not concerned with a linear narrative.
A goal is to explore the self in the noise of the world, the dialogue between the internal dialogue and the public language. I have an interest in creating in my work a sense of place that is of the mind. This is an intense and quiet search for a moment in time to highlight the contradictions between the private and the public world.
The intention in my work is to be clearly and openly poetic. The hope is to render the unintelligible more accessible.
In the work Found. Conversations with a Bird, I have invented a character that represents others. I am well aware that as an artist my search echoes precedents like Velazquez, Juan Munoz and others in literature and the visual arts. I navigate in that complexity.
The Expulsion Series: He & She was inspired by the fresco painting, Expulsion by the 15th century Italian artist Masaccio. I have adopted and transformed these two characters because I feel that they reflect a response to the tragic historical moment in which we are living.
My recent sculpture and paintings continue my on going interest in creating "characters" as outsider with attention to the everyday and the mundane. The illusory, the real, the allegory and the fragmentary cohabit a space/ stage/ setting that is dramatic and quiet.
The palette is muted almost black and white to emphasis the fiction and the timelessness of the scene.
The title, Cold Song, comes from the semi-opera King Arthur by the music composer Henry Purcell.
The Leopard series is a counterpoint to my previous work. In this series an excessive number of human limbs, sometimes erotically displayed give reference to my interest in Tibetan and Indian sculpture. The explosion of gesture and color acts as a balance to my other work, which is often quiet and introspective. The Leopard series represents a more extroverted character, a vehicle to express intense energy and emotion, perhaps a result of the contradictions between the private and the public world.
Current Interests
Art and the mundane.
Disclaimer: All work represents the views of the INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS & AUTHORS who created them, and are not those of the school or museum of the Art Institute.
