ARTIST STATEMENT

Magical and welcomed, creativity lends beauty, meaning, and illumination to our lives, helping us transform the unknown into positive modalities for living during challenging times.

Though often scary living with uncertainty is fundamental to life, a journey that unfolds like the ocean’s waves. In the shaping of waves, formed by continuous, opposing and uncertain forces, rhythm and symmetry guide us. As waves adjust to each other, shifting boundaries result in a kind of harmonic order. Creativity operates similarly, transforming the unknown into dynamic, rhythmic processes that help us engage more fully with life. 

My art is my lifeforce, my spiritual guide. For many years I’ve created environmental public art and gallery works that embody transformative states including life, death,    regeneration, metamorphosis and ascension. Outdoors, I create contemplative and     immersive environments that are site-specific, changing over time. When possible these are sited along or in waterways. Indoors I create installations, dimensional wallpieces, paintings and  sculptures. My art embraces ephemerality and uncertainty, growing from strength and resilience. Inspired by nature, I study changing realities as symbolized in the fluidity of water, shifting skyscapes and ephemeral wings. While focusing on regenerative and transformative cycles, ecological, social justice, historical and other concerns emerge. 

My path has unfolded like moving waves, with one experience shaping the boundaries of the next and then, the next. I explore new ways to depict what I experience directly and what my work in the world teaches me. Through various means, my work interweaves different realities. In pursuit of visual and conceptual truth, integrity and beauty I experiment with materials, techniques, content and poignant symbolism. Typically I work in series to explore ideas and approaches more deeply. My art integrates color, changing light and reflection, texture, dimension and layering. It combines natural elements with layered, hand-painted or hand-dyed components and ephemeral elements, such as milkweed and broken glass.

Through my journey as a public and gallery artist, an educator and therapeutic facilitator, many creative dimensions intertwine, informing each other. For thirty-six years I’ve worked with people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities in diverse urban and rural settings, facilitating the revitalization of individuals and communities. These visual arts programs and public art projects led organically into the field of arts for wellness. For twenty-four years I’ve facilitated those touched by traumatic brain injury, cancer, mental and other illnesses, or physical disabilities. I’ve orchestrated diverse people in the creation of collaborative environments and murals for highly trafficked public settings. With an oncology group, I built a Healing Arbor on a city waterfront that became a long term, beloved public place. In the next few years I will orchestrate a   Transforming Uncertainty Sanctuary, to be created with diverse community members.

Through artistic states of unknowing creativity helps individuals and societies live with perspective and full engagement, in sync with the shaping of waves. Nature’s cycles have inspired my art as it transforms over time. In the past few years a vision of metamorphosis, occurring in successive, upward transitions or bardos, has been evolving. These continuous states honor the integrity of soul. They guide the realignment of inner chemistry, propagating fundamental processes of growth. As we metamorphosize, I envision spiritual ascension.

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