statement

Drawing for me has always been the beginning of any project. It is where the conceptual world meets the physical world. So, when I began thinking about how I wanted to approach working with issues related to climate change, naturally I started to draw. I have a very large studio, and I've always loved working large, so I decided to make monumental drawings. At first the pieces included layered sheets of plastic and ink. Finally, I realized that this work was much more effective in its simplest form. Ink on transparent plastic seemed conceptually elegant to me as representative of a vanishing world. Monuments to disappearing geological features seemed to be a good way to represent global climate change. Water was an obvious place to start my investigation, because the warming global climate is resulting in prolonged droughts and extreme weather events. What better way to memorialize features of the variable, fleeting and disappearing environment than to use our most precious resource, water. I liked the contradiction of trying to suspend something so fluid as a water in time.

Monuments to the Ephemeral is a series of drawings that explore ideas related to the effects global climate change on the environment. As early as the 19th century, American landscape painters of the Hudson River Valley School realized that the natural resources of the Americas were under assault by industrialization. Their work idealized the pristine landscape of the Americas in order to preserve and glorify its grandeur. My work references these paintings with a renewed alarm at the effect of climate change and the fragility of the environment. Monuments to the Ephemeral speaks to environmental concerns through the futile attempt to immortalize vanishing geological features in images that are even more fragile and ephemeral. Comprised of transparent plastic and ink, these drawings have a fairly short life span. In the gallery, they hang loosely against the wall and sway with any gentle breeze caused by the movement of our human bodies. To personalize the drawings, each piece also includes an excerpt from a love letter. Like the environment, love is ephemeral and can be nurtured or easily destroyed. Both subjects confront issues associated with loss.

bio

born: 1960, Louisville, Kentucky

education

University of Georgia, MFA
Tyler School of Art, BFA

selected awards/honors

Honorable Mention,"35th Bradley International Print and Drawing Exhibition" Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois, 2015
Lucasse Fellowship, Kalamazoo College, Awarded for Excellence in Scholarship or Creative Work 2002
First Prize, Birmingham Bloomfield Art Association, "Michigan Fine Arts Competition, 1998
Grand Prize, Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts, "97 Area Show", 1997

selected solo or two-person exhibits

Firehouse Art Center, Monuments to the Ephemeral, Longmont, Colorado, 2015
Grand Rapids Arts Council, Ghost Paintings, Art Prize, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2010
Kingscott, Ghost Portraits and Burn Paintings, Kalamazoo Michigan, 2008
Lansing Art Gallery, Cosmologies, Lansing, Michigan, 2006

selected group shows

Bradley University, 35th Bradley International Print and Drawing Exhibition, Peoria, Illinois, 2015
Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Associations, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2011
Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Facing Michigan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2009
Evansville Art Museum, The Luster of Silver, Evansville, Indiana, 2009