If you visit my personal studio at the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative, you’ll notice that the work is varied, but clearly that of a person in love with printmaking. As I draw on plate and stone, burn images onto screens or carve into wood, I let the process of making guide me where it wants to lead, and I’m often surprised by the resulting messages and visual information. Why did that fish just hop onto my stone? Why does the bird soar via parachute? Why do I keep drawing elaborate rootlike motifs that become hair or rope or seaweed? The imagery in my etchings, lithographs, screen prints and recent explorations with found glass are derived from both dreams and life, and the way these experiences are sewn together, with odd bits of memories mixed and strewn throughout.
Birds and fish migrate on waves of cloud and sea, using their senses to navigate their way. We watch in wonder as they flit and float, and are inspired to be our better selves. I’m interested in the idea of fragility – of our faculties, our senses, and of our “place” in the world and how, in the pursuit of saving it, we might save ourselves.
