statement

I am interested in the essence of place and the role of materiality as it relates to location. Within this framework, I am intrigued by the human need to construct and organize the environment, and the relationships between visual patterns that result from humans interacting with the world around them.

My current work revolves around the materiality of the written word, its meaning and manipulation. My processes begin with experimental word play and code building and borrow from practices at the intersection of typography, drawing and even needlework (as the act of stitching was a method for teaching and learning to write in many cultures). These interests have led to an analysis of notation systems defined by the merging of the visual and verbal, the linkage between gesture and writing, and the ways that time and place affect language.

Of note, I am drawn to the idiosyncratic use of puns and shorthand that exist in illuminated manuscripts, and the manner in which those applications are reflected in contemporary graffiti. Acting as a device for representation, commentary, or a rare spark of individualism on the part of the scribe, meanings that were conveyed in images and symbols often took the place of the verbal, but later reappeared as stylized marks or words with ambiguous meanings. This is how new words, names and figures of speech are born, and similar transformations remain rampant today in our media-enhanced, multi-language communication systems. By comparing the "language-bending" that appears in text messaging, tweets, acronyms, emoticons, and systems of encryption, to the slow, labored touch and intimate sentiment of 19th century handwritten letters, the distance between gesture and word collapses into an organically connected system of growth.

bio

born: 1962, Allentown, Pennsylvania

education

Maryland Institute College of Art, MFA, 2001
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, BFA, 1999

selected awards/honors

Fellowship in Drawing and Printmaking, Rhode Island Council on the Arts, 2013
Professional Development Grant, Rhode Island School of Design, 2011, 2007
Tiffany Foundation Award Nominee, 2005, 2003

selected publications

Architectural Inventions: Visionary Drawings; edited by M. Bua and M. Goldfarb. London, U.K.: Lawrence King Publishing, Ltd. p. 183, 2012
Pavel Zoubok Gallery; Leslie Hirst: Excursions Through Clovered Landscapes, catalogue essay by Arthur C. Danto. New York, NY, 2008
you are here - the journal of creative geography, volume 7; Four: Trail. Phoenix, AZ: The University of Arizona Press p. 42-43, 2005
New American Paintings; The M.F.A. Annual. Wellesley, MA: The Open Studio Press p. 42-45, 2001

selected solo or two-person exhibits

Grimshaw-Gudewicz Gallery: Fall River, MA, 2012
Pavel Zoubok Gallery: fourmations, New York, NY, 2008
3500 Parkdale: Friends of Art, Baltimore, MD, 2007
Montgomery Clock Gallery: Inhabited Landscapes, Baltimore, MD, 2002

selected group shows

Weatherspoon Art Museum: Art on Paper, Greensboro, NC, 2012
Hunterdon Art Museum: Disparate Roots, Clinton, NJ, 2012
VI Biennale di Soncino a Marco: American Artists and Not, Soncino, Italy, 2011
Pavel Zoubok Gallery: In context: collage + abstraction, New York, NY, 2007