When Scott and I met, we were both wanting something more, knowing that something better could happen. We had been through our individual adult hell for several years. Me, a divorced mother of young children with a controlling ex-husband and finishing nursing school where I witnessed some of the worst cruelty of my life- nursing instructors. Scott was deep in his alcoholism, fresh out…
In this single sheet artist book, I lay out the scenario of a character dying who gets saved by another character opening the blinds to the room and letting the sunlight in. I created this book in a familiar form while studying with Esther Smithat Cooper Union, long before my terminal diagnosis. However, the narrative still feels true to me upon waking in the morning to my alarm. True and even…
When I lived in New York City, I received a daily infusion of subject matter by just walking down the street. Neglected window displays, piles of trash accumulated in snowy tree planters, Philip Guston paintings at MoMA with my corporate pass, whatever was up at Zach Feuer, bubble tea from Chinatown.
I biked out to the edge of the city sometimes to find the flotsam and jetsam of capitalism’s…
I have always loved to draw, to the point that I almost earned and Studio Art Minor in college, but I was short a class. Bad planning. I never thought of myself as an artist in that way, one who would make drawings and paintings, show them to people, and sell them, even. Not then. Art classes were something I did to stretch my brain in a different direction than writing and literature, which was…
In 2018, I was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive kidney cancer, Papillary Type II. Five years ago, there was generally a six month prognosis for this type of disease. I’ve managed to survive a year and a half so far with the support many lovely people and some miracle-like medications.
The drawings here are to be read left to right like a book (opening the first image in carousel mode –…
It’s not that you would know that this place, The Plant, exists, necessarily. At the feed and seed in Pittsboro, you take the road across the street, Industrial Parkway Drive, which then turns into Lorax Drive. You drive a long ways through a cut over area that is growing back. until you turn the corner and a whole alternative-style village appears on the grounds of a former aircraft parts…
The Subway Book, also called The Novel of You, was a tiny stab-binding (with staples) experiment with distributing artworks. I made a dozen of these books with an illustrated poem inside which I offloaded by leaving copies in the seats of the F train, my train to work.
I didn’t retain a copy of the book or the text inside, so I only have a vague recollection of what the work was about. The…
Of all the commentary, saying something about works on paper for me is challenging. The works that I have completed on this medium span the conceptual subject matter of my artwork. However, sometimes I go to paper to get away from the story and the personae, my normal modes of operation. Working on paper for me can be a kind of a sit down on a tarp with cans of house paint thing, like a child…
As many painters would say, the sketchbook is where initial ideas and ephemeral things get worked out before commitment to canvas. My sketchbooks are that, but they are also their own thing, as I imagine is the case for some artists. Most of the work I’ve done in total is in a sketchbook. Sometimes I’ve felt guilty about this fact, but I realize that is how I like to work with the portable and…
