Foster/White Gallery
April 7-30, 2011

Our lightest touch affects the land, and the land in turn inhabits us. Soil under our fingernails and rain in our hair, we reach our faces up to the sun when it breaks through the clouds. The cycles of sowing and reaping sustain us as we work in balance with the Earth.

My artwork interprets natural forms and textures through the lens of culture, a culture that is built on our agrarian past. In my new series, Blades and Cotyledons, I delve deeper into shape and surface, finding richness in a narrow groove.

The Blades series explores shape as a metaphor for human interaction with the natural world. Obsidian, fractured into faceted shards from solid stone, creates a sharp, cutting edge. Hoes till and reap. We can focus on a single blade of grass in the expanse of a field for just a moment before it is lost among the many.

The Cotyledons series examines the energy of growth as it bursts forth from the stasis of the contained seed. Shaken from a packet and pushed into damp soil by a child’s finger or planted by the million by an industrial agribusiness, the seed is an essential building block of culture. A fragile miracle of nature, the seed sprouts and feeds the hungry.

Three practices come together to form my work: Sculpting, surface design, and stitch. Drawings become maquettes become patterns. Fabric is dyed, over-dyed, discharged, resisted, printed. Panels are free-motion embroidered by machine and hand-stitched into their final shapes. I am invested in process: Exploring, teaching, documenting, writing, and making.