statement

Making art, for me, is often like inviting strangers into my studio. Over time, some become friends while others leave, never to be seen again. In the stranger there is the potential to discover something. It is not necessarily the new, exotic, or even the familiar that I am search for. Perhaps it is what we are all looking for: aliveness.

The intersection of light and the material world is one place where this kind of aliveness may be found. It seems when the materials of our world can move from noun to verb, via light, I know my work is beginning to speak. But the goal is not merely for it to speak, but to sing.

Drawing with light began in the darkroom of my first photography classes in college. I loved "dodging and burning". But I could do without its chemicals, and I missed the physical world that photographs often make us long for. After living in Provence for a year, I began to notice in light its complexity, subtly, and "quick-silver" ephemeralness. I also saw in it the potential to ask questions around issues of epistemology, ontology, and beauty.

The world's an untranslatable language (for Charles Wright) has as its fulcrum a poem by Charles Wright, whose work I admire and find power in. When I understand his work, it's like lightning. Indeed, there is aliveness in his work that I desire to have in mine. I believe, as many of his poem tell us, that there are impossibilities in the world, but these are often coupled with corporal beauty that leave us stammering, lingering in its light.

bio

born: Geneva, Illinois

education

University of Wisconsin-Madison, MFA, 1998
Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, BA, Psychology, 1990
Lacoste School of the Arts, Lacoste, France

selected awards/honors

Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Fellowship/Grant, 2002, 2004, 2009, 2012
Univ. of Wisconsin-Stout Professional Development Grant, 2006, 2009, 2012
MCAD/Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Fellowship, 2002-2003
Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship, 2002

selected publications

Hunter College, NY, Tracy L. Adler, Mara Hoberman, "Smoke+Mirrors/Shadows+Fog" exhibition catalog, 2010
National Public Radio, The Story, Dick Gordon, "A Light Love Story", April 14, 2008
CIRCA: 121, Contemporary Visual Culture in Ireland, Eimear McKieth, "Follow the light",  Autumn, 2007, p. 74-76
Irish Times, Aidan Dunne, "Devilish Discord", p. 18, May 2, 2007

selected solo or two-person exhibits

"Love is more talked about than surrendered to (for Charles Wright)", Augsburg College, Minneapolis, MN, 2013
"Unsatisfied Desire (For Melanie Freeman)", Living Arts, Tulsa, OK, 2011
"Beauty too close will ruin your life (for Charles Wright)", Babel Kunst, Trondheim, Norway, 2009
"The Annihilation of Matter (for William Bronk)", University of Rochester, NY, 2008

selected group shows

"Neal Marlens & Carol Black: The Wonder Years", Sadie & Halie Projects, Brooklyn, NY, 2012
"Smoke + Mirrors/Shadow + Fog", Hunter College/Time Square Gallery, New York, NY, 2010
"Plane: Discussions in Contemporary Sculpture 2007", The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, Ireland, 2007
"Artists' Work Program Exhibition", Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland, 2003