Box 2 Sculpture

My work explores culture, identity and social justice in various media: sculpture, photography, video, installation and writing. My work consistently bridges diverse cultures, focusing on the unique beauty and genius of each as well as what we have in common. Cultural preservation is important to my work. My research takes the form of immersive field work. My annual visits to Mali provide me with inspiration. My social consciousness and my deep and continuing interest in African art and culture also fuel my work. Long-term collaborations, particularly with Malian artists, are clearly in the realm of social art practice. We are all, at the same time, researcher and object of research producing dialogues and concrete works of art. My many community projects internationally and in the US include participation with diverse groups of artists and non-artists. My life experiences play an integral part in the development of my work. A master welder, I work in three dimensions as well as on paper, on the floor, on walls, and suspended from the ceiling, indoors and outdoors. My installations include steel sculptures, video, photography and sound. My work combines poetry, patterns, forms and African themes that engage in social discourse. My work combines energy, abstract and classical forms and ideas as well as ages old motifs and skills. It records and reflects human scale, labor, body ornaments, utensils, community and traditions as well as the new. It is quiet and open at the same time. The interplay of texture and pattern combines with an off-kilter geometry that gives my work a special immediacy and excitement. My sculptures thrive on small tensions between light and shadow, positive and negative, organic and precise, playful and serious, political and personal. I create my often-poetic steel sculptures using a welding torch as a drawing instrument, cutting images and sometimes text into them. My work in the US and internationally includes cultural, educational and women's empowerment projects as well as commissions, exhibitions, collaborations, residencies, community art projects, public art projects. I has been working in Mali for more than two decades. As an undergraduate, I participated in an Experiment in International Living program to Ghana and traveled in West Africa for the rest of the year. I am a graduate of Antioch College (BA) and New York University (MA).