Earth Form Five, detail

My work is informed by my exploration of surface design on fabric. I begin with white or black natural fiber cloth which I then dye, discharge, print, paint, and resist. I find these processes endlessly rewarding and I enjoy the challenge of finding the correct solution for each piece. Patterning, forming, and finally stitching bring each work to completion.

This body of work is inspired by the landscape that surrounds us and the touch of human hands upon it. These influences, nature and civilization, and the passage of time overlap and intertwine in the pieces represented here. The titles, numbered instead of named in most cases, allow the viewer to make his or her own association of the work to the natural world.

The Earth Forms are a direct response to my experience of nature. The cracked strata of sedimentary rock in a cliff face, the whorl in a piece of driftwood, the line of color in a beach pebble, the force of a mushroom as it bursts from the forest floor: all these details come into sharp focus in the light of our gray winter days. Each form is a document of the passage of time.

The Artifacts interpret these natural forms and textures through the lens of culture. Shield, basket, urn, or offering, each one is marked by an ancient civilization, an imagined series of Rosetta Stones discovered by an archaeologist’s assistant.

Breakup is a response to the quickly disappearing polar ice fields. The heavy hand of global warming is our civilization’s signature on the land in the coming age.

The Seen/Unseen panels were displayed in Fall 2008 as part of a larger installation for Sound Transit’s Start on Broadway. They panels represent civilization degraded over time, architectural details abstracted and crumbling. Crows fly past, one of few representatives of wildlife in our urban lives. These images which are symbolic of transformation are so pervasive that they are seen, yet unseen.

Breakup