STATEMENT
My lifelong focus as an artist has been to create work that is intensely personal. My imagery comes out of my deepest self through my hands. Those are ancient aquifers that connect to the greater collective unconscious. I dive down inside, and dredge up symbols and memories that link many cultures, many times. I bring the old myths, stories, and icons back up to the surface and re-vision them for contemporary times. I make work about women, about our lives, about our struggles and our strength, about our extraordinary wisdom and our ways of knowing. I have been able to use my art and my position as a female artist as tools for social change for women. With this in mind, I am making my art more publicly visible.
There is an inner component to my work that delivers a wiggly sensation to a certain sensitized kind of viewer. This is not to say that those who do not feel the wiggly sensation are “less-than.” But there is something built into the work that is beneath the picture plane. When a Hopi makes a kachina that is meant for their family, the doll is imbued with a spirit. It is not a decorative object for sale to strangers. You have to be aware that there is a spirit residing in the doll. That is also the case with the work that I make. There is something residing within the work, and there are some people who feel that when they engage with the work. It is not their imagination.
Women have a spectacular genius for core expression. We know the realm of the subjective. It is our landscape. But subjective imagery is like childbirth. Not everyone can pull it off. Not everyone wants to watch. Art with undisguised emotional content can fail. It can apologize, whine, beg, or run away at the critical moment. However, when it succeeds it is altogether glorious, like shooting the rapids. It’s messy. It’s also juicy, slippery; moving, shimmering. The art I make is about life, death, and everything that happens in between. But mostly it’s about what happens under the surface.