Featured Artist. July 2021
2021 National Women's Caucus for Art
I have always been inspired by the written word. Growing up in a rural area, I had little access to the visual arts. However, as an avid reader and a roamer of the fields and woods around my house, I lived an imaginative life.
Times of Trouble: Sky is Falling is the first piece in a new series begun in the spring of 2020. In those early months of Covid19, it was apparent that the world was going to be forever changed by this pandemic.
As a child I identified with Henny Penny and her nervousness about being in the world. The book Chicken Little terrified me but I couldn’t remember why. I bought this classic—still in print—and remembered: it did not end well for Henny.
Times of Trouble: Sky is Falling
3” x 3”, encaustic, oil, ceramic letters on wood panel
Writer, professor, feminist theorist, and cultural critic, bell hooks has had a profound influence on my ideas and work for decades. The words on Models for Study: bell hooks, was coined by her because she wanted “language that would actually remind us of the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality…” Race, class, gender remain institutional constructs that continue to benefit people who are white.
Text has been integral to my work since the 90’s. In the early pieces, word and image created a juxtaposition of ideas and materials that took place on old painted book covers. Now, words are the image and create meaning both with the form and the message.
Models for Study: bell hooks
4” x 4”, encaustic, oil, ceramic letters on wood panel
The past four years of political and social backsliding, the pandemic, the horrific murder of George Floyd, and the insurrection of the Capitol brought to light the cruel, violent, and unjust nature of America.
Models for Study: Jenny Offill is a call for a different way to imagine each other and the world. Offill’s words from her book Weather exist as we do right now in a place where we have to choose a different way to exist.
Models for Study: Jenny Offill
4” x 4”, encaustic, oil, ceramic letters on wood panel