ARTIST STATEMENT
A giant skeleton lies stretched out alongside Interstate 15 near Tremonton, Utah. Circular cavities, dangling rebar ribs and empty door frames provide infinite metaphor but give little clue to its reason for being. Is it some relic of a long-forgotten civilization or the bones of an ancient vessel washed up on Lake Bonneville’s antediluvian shores? Generations mark their rites of passage on the moldering walls and decaying ramps to nowhere. Mother Nature, politics and cows trudge over its peeling carcass with equal disregard. The longer it survives, the more mysterious its content and genesis.
The ability to survive in the face of imminent and actual disaster resonates in the methods and themes of my art. Oddly enough, fresh laundry hanging on a line strikes a related refrain as it is tied so deeply to the transformative events of living. A basket full of soiled clothes magically ends up dancing in the breeze. Bed sheets become corridors of cotton, waiting expectantly in the calm before a storm. These vivid memories from my childhood as the second of eight and also as the mother of five children also find place in my art.
One of twelve design templates (referred to as Orthogons, derived from a square) forms the understructure for every piece. At once tedious and tempering, this historically rich process of measuring guides the application of medium and gives me the sense that my artwork is connecting in some way to the pulse of distant generations—either direction. My explorations center on the interplay of time, space and the textures of experience.