Documenting my personal cultural phenomena I tell the stories of my life through representations of memory. Making art for me is making life records; similar to the anthropologist collecting data to create more complete pictures of things that have past. By representing the details of experience, the everyday, and the left over pieces, I feel that I can preserve the remnants of my past and present for the future. In this way, my most recent work is a catalogue of my existence.

Always essential to my work has been the collecting of artifacts and objects, and the preservation and presentation of these pieces of the past. Sometimes the data is collected via video, actual objects are scavenged, and some artifacts are created from memory (near reproductions of objects lost). The evidence displayed in an installation format tells the stories of the past through layers of information both visual and textural.

Most recently my obsession with collecting has turned into large scale drawing installations. I draw from life. The making of the drawing is as much a part of the work as the content or subject. It is the artist as record maker that interests me; documenting the real world through my own hand. I create drawings so that the objects of memory can be archived and stored ahead of time. Ironically, I use non-archival materials that fade over time. In this way the drawings are temporal and fragile, reinforcing the idea of the impermanence of my existence.

I create then curate my own works. Cutout drawings of everyday household objects become movable pieces in a virtual interior space. The re-composition of elements and parts to create new virtual realities plays an important role in my newest works, specifically My House: the artifacts. In the gallery I take on the role of exhibition designer, as I arrange the objects I've drawn on the walls. These objects/artifacts are physical forms, and although they are two-dimensional drawings I relate to them as three-dimensional signifiers. These virtual objects are as real to me as their sources, and in this way, a drawn vase is no less real in my world as a real vase. Truth or fiction, these artifacts are the evidence of my existence.

Interested in testing the conventions of drawing, I work in and around academic traditions of representation. I use marker as my drawing medium so I cannot correct the mistakes of the hand. Each imperfection, in search of perfection, inspires me to continue in the task of collecting data and representing my own reality.

Collections of objects, text, diagrams, portraits, marks and memories fill my work. I create wall installations using cut out or shaped drawings to show the massive nature of the collected personal experience. I use the everyday as subject to denote the importance of the individual, even in the most mundane representations of my life.

born: 1971, Covington, KY

education

University of Cincinnati, MFA, 2001
Northern Kentucky University, BFA, 1998

selected awards/honors

Presidential Excellance Grant for Creative Expression, St. Edward's University, 2008
Faculty Development Grant, St. Edward's University, 2008
Visiting Artist, Eastern Oregon University, 2008
Leading Women of Cincinnati in Arts and Entertainment, Cincinnati, OH, 2003

selected publications

b.j.u.r.e., Visual Journey: Enslavement, Underground Railroad, Freedom. Highland Heights, KY: Northern Kentucky University Press p. 52-53, 2004

selected solo or two-person exhibits

St. Edward's University Fine Arts Gallery: Empty Vessels, Austin, TX, 2008
University Galleries on Sycamore: Records and Illusions, Cincinnati, OH, 2006
The Artery: Ruby's House, Newport, KY, 2002
Risch Gallery: Color, Surface, Form, Ft. Thomas, KY, 2002

selected group shows

Nightingale Gallery, Eastern Oregon University: Making Their Mark, La Grande, OR, 2008
University Art Gallery, Indiana State University: Evidence and Residues: An Investigation of Contemporary Drawing, Terre Haute, IN, 2007
Arts + Literature Laboratory Gallery: TEXTURE, New Haven, CT, 2006
Northern Kentucky University Main Gallery: b.j.u.r.e., Visual Journey: Enslavement, Underground Railroad, Freedom, Highland Heights, KY, 2004