Photo taken at the artist's studio, NM  2012

Bio

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Statement

What does it mean to be clothed in a body? The body is the location of experience through sight, touch, physical pleasure, and pain, and the body can often seem like the most real part of a person. But a person’s physicality alone does not fully communicate the complexity and nuance of the entire person. The body is a costume that both broadcasts and disguises our being. Because the body is inadequate to communicate who the whole person is, the body can impede our ability to fully know one another.

Fibers, costume, performance, video, sculpture, drawing, collage, and painting are used to discuss the experience and meaning of being clothed in skin. Sensory aspects of communication such as, touch, gaze, and physical proximity are the language of communication in my work. Fabricated situations are largely used to engage the viewer in this discussion. 

Costumes are built as “alter-skin” worn to embellish the communication of my own body.  My fabricated skin helps me to disguise the familiar and to instead portray the body as a strange, unfamiliar covering. I intend to assign objecthood to unseen human emotional desires. These costumes are the physical manifestation of fears, pleasures, and yearnings that drive the flesh. Using the costumes in performance allows me to represent abstract human qualities as a visual reality that can be experienced through texture, sight, motion, and time. 

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