I use common, everyday materials to work in a medium with strong ties to decorative art and popular craft. Depending on the viewer, these ties can present a barrier or a pathway to serious consideration. Although repurposed, my materials are still recognizable as objects made for another use, suggesting that meaning and value can be found by looking at something in a different way. I hope to engage through familiarity while raising larger questions about economic consumption and our attachment to objects. I choose my materials for their tactile qualities, but am equally inspired by how and why they were made, used, valued and de-valued. Recognition and discovery describe both the process and intention of my work.

Truncated series: My initial interest in trees as a mosaic subject was superficial. Bark resembled the textures and hues of the handmade pottery I used as tesserae and I wanted to see how these materials would translate the physical presence and visual impression of a tree. That was the starting point for a six-part series, completed March through December of 2020 - a time of tension and isolation, both political and personal. The divisive politics and social unrest of 2020 unfolded against the backdrop of a deadly worldwide pandemic. Our truncated lives reminded us of nature’s power to destroy and to heal.

Gibson Widow series: I came of age during a time of dramatic upheaval in the ongoing evolution of gender equality. On the nightly news, women burned bras in defiance of social norms, while in my daily life those norms were expressed as practical advice: Why buy the cow when the milk is free? It’s as easy to love a rich man as a poor! A set of plates featuring the Charles Dana Gibson illustrations from “A Widow and Her Friends” inspired a mosaic series that attempts to understand and reconcile the contradictions that shaped me. Using fractured materials associated with traditional “women’s work,” I embed the Gibson Girl - a century-old symbol of both idealized femininity and New Woman independence - within a landscape of intersecting signs and symbols. Pictures and patterns marketed to women in the form of dishware are nipped and shaped to create and disrupt the andamento that links one scene to the next.