I am primarily interested in using discarded, mass-produced, and crowd-sourced materials to create installations, sculptures, and mixed media artworks. My process is a playful and repetitive investigation of the poetic and formal aspects of material, space, and form. Objects and materials are chosen specifically for inherent meaning. Environments are built, consumer objects are placed in the landscape, and organic forms are chosen and then subverted by the materials used.

 

Found objects and crowd-sourced jeans feature broadly in my work from 2020. Denim is durable, comfortable, sometimes sexy, but always casual. It has a long history and many perceived meanings. It references the body, gender, beauty, industry, history, commerce, and much more.

 

The denim installations are site-specific, responding to the architecture of the exhibition space and defined by contour lines sourced from aerial photos and maps of the surrounding land or cityscape. While researching a location I target local waterways and migratory passages as potential sources.

 

The denim is pulled tight between the walls of the space, tracing the contours of each line, creating a dynamic form. Crowd-sourced from family, friends, and social media, each pair are cut into strips and tied together to create a single length of denim rope. The process of cutting, knotting, and spinning the fabric strips onto cable spools is a re-thinking of typical women's work.

 

The sculptural elements are inspired by many things including the artwork of Georgia O’Keefe, politics, feminism, motherhood, and my place within the culture of the Southeast and the nation. These works are made intuitively, responding to the objects while considering symbolic, formal, and aesthetic combinations and forms.