Final artist statement in Nov '09 for Inward

In my work, I am interested in creating a non-verbal (or verbal, if necessary) dialogue between the artwork and the audience.  I am interested in work that changes with its viewer and its environment. As each idea generally begins from a reaction to a personal experience, I am often present in my works to further explore ideas of personal versus collective experience.  Like Joseph Beuys' I am America and America is Me, I do not delineate between myself and the artwork.  I ask the audience to share a moment with me as I am experiencing it.  I am interested in creating work which is interactive, which by looking at or interacting with it it, creates a new active experience instead of a passive one.

 

In this series of red string portraits, I was inspired by this feeling of being pulled in multiple directions; of feeling limited and stuck as a result of freedom and desire.  I found myself  creating symbol-like objects: simple single images intended to hold and communicate complex and emotional ideas.  Once again, I find these works to be similar to Beuys' fat sculptures which are both minimal and loaded.  I also draw from the video work of Kate Gilmore, who creates straightforward and dangerous, yet playful, scenarios to communicate her ideas.

Like Marcel Duchamp's 1 mile of String, this work also both plays with ideas of space and ideas myself as an artist in relationsip to my work and to the gallery. As I began to play with this material, I really fell in love with it.  The elasticity of the string, which allows for it to be pulled tight(which reminds us of lasers or man made materials) or it loose (which reminds us of a playful cat); the domesticity of textile materials; the red color which reminds us of bodily things; the idea of a string of yarn being part of a whole(sweater, or blanket); the fact that yarn loses its utility when strung and left loose instead of being knitted or crocheted: I got totally lost and enveloped in the material in a way that was both exciting and passionate as well as constricting and scary.