Artist Statement

 

 

When I first started showing my art, in the 1990's, a woman bought an assemblage. The piece combined a thick piece of paper, almost a plank of pulp I had made from flax and weeds, with a basket shape made of bark. About a year after she purchased it I ran into her at a gallery and she told me that the basket had begun to detach itself from the rest of the piece. I was embarrassed and, of course, said I would come over and repair it as soon as possible. "Oh no", she said, "I pinned it back in, from behind you know. It's what we women do. Like when you are making a meal that starts to go wrong or a seam starts to split. You pick up whatever is on hand and you fix it."

 

She showed me something about my art. She showed me that my process is intimately related to domestic life, even though I am not a very domestic person. There are fancier names for such an art process. Bricolage, for example,  is a term made popular by the arte povera movement in the 60's, meaning art that is constructed from whatever materials are at hand; something created from a variety of available things. In the original French usage it is a term for DIY projects, things that result from tinkering or puttering.

 

I have found ways, in the last 25 years, to make sure that my bricolages don't come apart. However, they are still deeply connected to "what we women do", as my early collector put it. It is a creative tinkering that often makes use of whatever comes to hand, a frame of mind that has its roots in personal, domestic life, traditionally women’s worlds.