statement

My work is driven by the observed world, and my drawings are a hybrid of the witnessed and the imagined. Subjects and textures in my work come from direct encounters with natural materials and animal husbandry: plants and animal parts, sheep wool and felting processes, grooming tools I've seen in horse barns. My current series presents a marriage of the animate and inanimate. The subjects suggest references both inert and alive, manufactured and organic. These drawings blend functional objects with living surfaces suggestive of tissue, hair, fur or cotton wadding. I have long been fascinated by the use of drawing for scientific and medical purposes. These drawings are presented as specimens, with a high level of description. The technique employed evokes biological illustration in level of information and compositional isolation. Brush #11 and #12 have linear sections with areas of color, alluding to diagrams that contrast with the graphite-rendered areas of simulated texture. Drawing is an ideal medium for speculation, for invention of unlikely hybrids.

bio

born: 1973

education

University of North Carolina, MFA, 1999
University of Minnesota at Duluth, BFA, 1997

selected awards/honors

Artist in Residence, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, Saratoga, WY, 2012
Artist in Residence, Millay Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, NY, 2011

selected publications

Eleven Eleven Journal, California College of the Arts, Issue #11, Summer 2011

selected solo or two-person exhibits

New Drawings, Earlham College, Richmond, IN, 2012
Brush, Kimura Gallery, Anchorage, AK, 2011
Plucked, Potter Gallery, Missouri Western State University, St. Joseph, MO, 2011

selected group shows

Circus, Gallery Project, Ann Arbor, MI, 2013
Carbon: Life, Decay and Beyond, Water Street Studios, Batavia, IL, 2013
Drawing Now/Le Salon du Dessin Contemporain, Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, France, 2012
Drawing Muchness, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL, 2012