I was once accused of being an object maker.
I agree and would take the accusation further and say that I am obsessed with certain objects: corsage and sewing pins, fine bone china teacups and silver flatware, hoop shirts and other ladies undergarments.  I have an intense attraction to their formal qualities and the cultural baggage that they carry, which allow me to focus on issues of the domestic realm, personal choice and class structure.

I enjoy playing with scale within my work.  As the everyday object grows it dwarfs the viewer, allowing the viewer to rethink the object in front of them.  I enjoy making myself a child again, awed and wanting to touch whatever is in front of me.  I try to combine this child-like joy with the idea of confection—something which is created for pleasure---always using materials, colors and marks that draw one in, let them indulge.  Currently, the work owns aesthetic layers of Victorian undergarments and prudishness peppered with the gaudiness of the Vaudeville stage.  This theatrical quality has become essential, in my mind, allowing the work to be taken satirically and truly indulged in.  I regularly image collect from the areas of theater, fashion and circus and carnival history.

My recent artistic work revolves around the performative aspects of life.  We take on roles daily—wearing the right costume and acting as we should.  I try to expose the heart of my roles in society, using a variety of media and imagery to lay out the habits within my own life.  As I moved through life and academia, I collected more roles.  At each step I have had to learn a new act, new lines and a new set of rules.  The juggling of these roles has begun to look more and more death-defying, a test of wills. 

We are all extreme multi-taskers, trying to be leaders, mothers, daughters, teachers, sisters, spouses, friends, artists, business people—all at the same time.  I was once told that living in an earlier American era was essentially easier—simply because there were less options for life to choose from.  Choice, change—this is where the potential for the most personal and social growth lies.  But change is also mired in the most fear. Within these daily roles we take on, we must always be aware of and question their underlying script, the compulsory habits within them.  This is the only way that cultural evolution can take place.  In The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, His Holiness the Dalai Lama expresses that the institutions of man, including religion, must evolve as man does so that they may continue to keep us compassionately motivated to one another.  We, as members of the artistic institution, are responsible for the criticism of culture.  Our role is to spur on evolution.

My life is at its core artistic.  I need to create novelty—to break my own habits.  I need to find the energy between myself and other makers and thinkers; myself and people on a whole.  I have faith in the powerful and positive force of making.  It has created and saved me, and sharing this essential idea with my students and fellow citizens fuels me through my days.