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| August Field | Three Prayer Flags | Life Tree with Globes |
| soft pastel | 19 x 9 | fabric mixed media | 9 x 9 | fabric mixed media | 18 x 36 |
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| Still Life | Banana | Bay Water Series | Omena Bay | Light Patterns on Snow |
| watercolor | 7 x 11 | soft pastel | 28 x 13 | soft pastel | 15 x 21 |
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| Bay Water Series | Suttons Bay | Bay Water Series | Omena Bay | Habitat Field |
| soft pastel | 15 x 28 | soft pastel | 13 x 28 | soft pastel | 5 x 11 |
Artist Statement | Central to my work are the materials (be it pigment-intense chalk, paints of various make-up or application or fabrics of any kind) and the process of translating what I see or am attemting to understand the world. Color, rythm, pattern, light, shapes and the ways they relate to each other inform and motivate my work. Sky, land and waterscapes and all included in those consistently draw my attention as I hold thoughts of those who live, work and play in them.
Artist Interview |
Q:What was your first memorable experience with art?
A:I'd have to say it permeated our lives in the surroundings whether at our home base or in the
community small to large: the architecture, systems of by-ways - lakes, channels, rivers,
harbors, boats; roads and bridges crossing these water bodies and buildings of every sort and
condition; cars, style; fields of weed, manicured garden, pedicured walkways; graffitied, tiled,
carved, constructed surfaces; water intakes on the rivers; paintings and depictions of all these.
In terms of working with my hands it was weaving long grasses under the trees, absorbing
crafts my mom did with girl scouts, then art classes. Memorable teachers were a pregnant longterm
sub who taught us watercolor still-lives in a circle; our 5th grade home room teacher who
was a nun and taught us math and art, often integrating the 2; another high school math teacher
who taught us string art geometry and h.s. art teacher who let me work long on my panda
cookie jar, mache caterpillar, and value study and repetition snake.
Q: Can you explain when you first knew you wanted to become an artist? Who/What turned
you on to Art?
A: Tho people say I have an artist sensibility, it seems like I'm becoming one. My parents
turned
Q: Is there any single piece of artwork that has impacted you as a child? An adolescent? An
adult?
A: This might seem a strange "single piece", but it's going to Europe with our family when 9
yrs. old as well as boating and all associated with those experiences.
Q: What artists influenced you the most? Current Influences?
A: Seascape and maritime paintings, Henry Moore, Kandinsky, Degas, O'keefe, Monet, the
Group of Seven, Pewabic Pottery, Galle, Tiffany glass, artists of works my parents, friends,
businesses displayed.
All sorts of nameless-to-me artisans were influential in traveling across country in different
directions as well as to some countries in Europe. Museums and organizations offered some
sense of place experienced through works collected, identified, displayed, explained.
Currently influences are friends, community members, immediate family, homegrown labels of
every sort.
Q: What do you like most about the medium and surface you use?
A: flow, viscosity, contactfulness (though I wouldn't say that about my use of silicone and
marbles at this time), grittiness, earthFUL expanding as I work with or through a piece.
Q: What ideas are behind you current work?
A: Evolving, growing, working through developmental gaps at different levels - it all comes up
- staying on the pollen path or getting back to it.
Q: What do you want people to respond to in your work?
A: A sense of place, different states, record of states that may seem contradictory, yet are fuller
than what we may believe possible.
Q: Do you have a predetermined idea of what your finished work will be like, or do the ideas
emerge in process?
A: Ideas emerge, which at times I'd like to run from or turn away, avoid; working with them is
easier than what my mind alone will allow sometimes.
Q: How would you describe your work to a visually disabled person?
A: The best of it has a sense of balance, hard and soft edges, a smoothness, transparency,
water-like qualities of the great lakes with all its vastness, differences, issues.
With fiber it's often a matter of pulling pieces together, integrating fabrics and patterns of mine
and others lives. Some are production prototypes to construct, then implement.
Q: What are your goals for your work in the next few years?
A: I have much work that is begun or due; I need to complete them and continue with others.
Increase productivity and sweat time.
