Woman Speaking Out II Collage

Symbolist artists said that 'everything in the real world is little more than a hieroglyphic of some transcendent idea', or, as Edgar Allan Poe put it: 'All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream'. The intention behind the making of all of my art was to make the invisible world visible; while early work addressed invisible or hidden issues like domestic violence and incest among others, the overwhelming majority of the work points to another thing. Some of the earlier social justice pieces are in the Brooklyn Museum's online Feminist Artbase. I work mostly with fabric because I love the texture and dimension, I use a lot of everyday items because I like to relate the ideas using a 'common alphabet' in a surprising way. I'm drawn to and inspired by all kinds of hieroglyphs, symbols, and even words-as-symbols . Where I've used my own or somebody else's words you can find the complete text on my website. I love Robert Rauschenberg's use of everyday objects, yard shows in the American South and their ties to African art and culture, collages of all kinds, especially Romare Bearden's, the paintings of Pedro Figari, and Jacob Lawrence's portrayals of working people. I earned a Bachelor of Science in biology, dozed off in research and clinical laboratories, and then traveled around the world. In the intervening years, Bophuthaswana, Barcelona, Paris, Buenos Aires, Lausanne, and London called themselves temporary homes. I had two solo shows in Nashville, two in North Carolina, and was invited to many group shows around the U.S.