The statement below was compiled for a retrospective exhibition of my work in 2014 at the Pryor Gallery at Columbia State Community College in Tennessee. It was the first show to feature pieces from the entirety of my 50+ years as an artist.
Nothing can replace the impact that is felt when experiencing this and any art in person. Art has the power to invoke emotion, to educate, and most of all to inspire, bringing out the best in each of us.
I call the first series “Yale Days.” It is made up of images created during my college and graduate school years, in Philadelphia and New Haven. I utilized maps as a metaphor to show the beauty and mystery of life. As I reviewed this body of work, I can see clearly the seeds of my lifelong, creative quest. This series has been sealed and unopened for 20 years. Upon seeing these images again, I fell in love with them, and was able to see, among other things, the sorrow and anxiety that stems from the Vietnam war.
The “Days of Awe and and Wonder” series results from studying and writing down my dreams for many years, and speaks of the mysterious moment of life, when time stand still in the Gates of Heaven open for a moment. I love to capture these dreams and fleeting glimpses of another world in picture form.
I was raised on a small barrier island off the coast of New Jersey, and had an intimate relationship with the ocean and bay there. My family lived two blocks from the Atlantic Ocean, so my childhood was one of incredible freedom to roam the waterways and marshes. At a very young age, I was free to run the beach alone anytime I desired. I thought then, that my working life was to take note of the many and varied changes in the ocean waves.
“Woven Figures” – One day, having discovered the flexibility of beach grass, I came home with a complete boat woven grass 2 feet tall. My mother was startled, and asked who my weaving teacher was. I told her, “No one I was just remembering.” This begin my career in fiber arts. The woven figures are in attempt to create four dimensional drawings in space. If a line is two dimensional and form is three dimensional, so a fourth dimensional creation could be something one sees on all sides, as well as the interior, in one glance. This effect can be realized with fiber.
The series, “What the Water Brought,” also began at this time. As with the other series, it reveals a lifelong fascination with bodies of water, as well as the design elements in various aspects of water flow. I include flower and bird studies in this group, as they all relate to water as their source.
“The Things We Have Forsaken” series is concerned with how the dominant culture in this country seems to have turned its back on the natural world. Images of Native Peoples grace the pictures in the series, as do images of horses.
When I turned 18, I learned about The Trail of Tears, and as I researched this part of our collective history, my heart broke. I had always suspected that native peoples seem to hold the keys to environmental sustainability and spirituality. I was angry that this chapter of U.S. history had been omitted from my education, and wondered what other things have continued to be kept from public knowledge. It was then that I vowed not to live a conventional life, and dedicated myself to seek out truth through beauty and art.
In 1984, my then-husband and I sold the family car and designed a camper buggy for ourselves. We purchased a draft horse from the Amish and took through the roads and blue highways of the deep south over the next four years, collecting stories and oral histories from the people we met along the way. For me, our 900-mile journey across Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi was a test of faith. Living out of our buggy, we were commonly asked if we kept guns, and how come we didn’t have a lock on the buggy door. We would simply smile and ask, “How many people got killed in your neighborhood last night?”
The relationships and adventures I had traveling around with our 1300 pound horse, “Tony,” were deeply satisfying. I could fall asleep on his back while he grazed on the grass, and ride him while standing up on his back too. He was a true, gentle giant, and he served as well throughout our long journey. I created more than 1000 pictures of horses, in all kinds of situation’s poses and temperaments. “The Things We Have Forsaken” contains the horse series, because humans, as a group have forgotten how to be friend and understand the horse.