The influences that flow through my work have been the resources I gather to make meaning in my life. They are derived from my bicultural background where all at once this provides perspective of varied points of view but can also isolate due to lack of formal associations with any particular group. I have always been interested in how identity is formed and how it is fused into a tightly woven construct.
Collage and weaving are processes that I often use, I am interested in repurposing, reconfiguring and restructuring and how that pertains specifically to identity construction both personally and collectively over time.
Some overarching themes in my work begin with the idea of the larger grid as a universal construct in space and time, within that there is the astronomical grid, then the geographical latitude and longitudinal grid we inhabit and the seemingly uniquely human need to form our collective and personal identity within it. The construct of “race”, consumerism, the performance of cultural ritual and layered histories and stories all stem from some point on the geographical grid and pertain to specific biological and social evolutionary adaptations.
There are sub themes relating to specific constructs we create to form identities within the larger grid structure. Forming an identity is always related to a community of some kind and therefore the tendency is to lead to exclusion and tribalism. Now more than ever this idea of “individualism” and “tribalism” is literally killing us. The idea of “naming” is related to this and the tendency to compartmentalize ourselves because of it. I have often referenced a gate or cage in my work because of this. There is much we gain in naming but it may be worth considering what we lose from it?
I am interested in the biodiversity of all living things and figuring out how I visually translate our interconnectedness and relationship we have both socially and ecologically to the larger universal grid. This brings me to the idea of representing the act of mending this existential grid that we are all part of and that this act of mending becomes a prayer or offering in the hopes of mending our relationships to each other and the planet.
I would like to attempt to visually represent and recognize our collective unity and the challenge we face in the quest to create order and maintain a sense of identity while overcoming our human frailty of disassociating ourselves with the unified whole. This is contradictory and the two cancel each other out as it has throughout history and also illustrated in the conflict between word and image, the visual tends to speak of the unified whole but not as powerful as the word in terms of forming identity.
For now my work seems wounded and scarred and stitched in an attempt to repair the fragments within the construct using an array of layered marks, color and imagery that pertain to my contextual space in time as energy and information flow is collected through time, it forms and informs our sense of identity.
Below are images, artists and themes of interest that have so far informed and influenced my work and a what will be a deeper dive into further exploration of artists past and present, books, essays and other writings is within the research dossier for this coming year.