We Become the Cross We Bear Collage

My art is my own forum in which to react not only to the world outside of me but to myself, who I am, how I feel, and who and what I have become. Often this pits me in front of a fractured mirror that I have to struggle to make sense of. Fusion or melding one material to another to create a visual harmony between two unrelated materials or objects is how I deal with struggle because being human is necessary, not easy. The natural surfaces that nature sculpts are the most pleasing to me and I find myself attempting to reproduce those surfaces and colors. I tend to but am not limited to a monochrome pallet of colors that are found in nature. Often I will simply make pieces of ceramic in quantity that then becomes "materials." Recycling found objects is not only necessary for the environment but the history of the object prior to its present incarnation adds to the mystic of the art The panels that I make are all about composition and balance or as it seems right to my eye. As the materials come together and take form they begin to show what they are and gain a title. I work abstractly because it is where I am most comfortable. When you work realistic everyone is your critic because everyone knows what reality looks like. In my melding, morphing, mutating world things are the way they should be because they have never existed. The assembly process consists of problem solving that teaches me something with each piece I make. I spend much of my time at hardware stores looking for methods of attachment. I tend to rely on the woman's work that I learned from my Grandmother. In my work there is sewing, quilting, knitting of materials be it though with wire, nails, wood, copper sheeting and power tools. Organic natural surfaces pulled together with a stitch or at least projecting the illusion Much of my work tells the viewer exactly how I feel. I do not feel that any child should feel shame about whom and what they are. Shame is such a big emotion that grows inside you and affects a person systemically. The feeling of having someone rip your insides out and leave them hang to dry and my struggle with anxiety. My art is also a reaction to our environment, the Gulf Oil spill and how all that pollution in the world's life giving waters will eventually cause mutations in the animals in order for the species to survive, how big or small, time will only tell.