Bio

I was born and raised in New Mexico. I left in my late teens to go to college and later graduate school. I’d always been a writer and academically-oriented but at 28, I had a stroke brought on by a congenital defect. Three weeks, two hospitals, and two brain surgeries later, my head hurt. I needed another way to engage with myself so I signed up for a figurative sculpture class and was introduced to clay. When I was better, I returned to the academic work and finished my Ph.D. in program evaluation.

Many years later, I signed up for another sculpting class. The clay felt familiar, and I realized how much I had missed working with my hands. I wondered what would happen if I committed to a regular art practice. That was 2012. Now I make art, and I do research. Sometimes these endeavors converge but mostly not. The irony that my stroke occurred just above my corpus callosum, the part of the brain that sits between and connects the left and right hemisphere, is not lost on me.

Statement

My father died on Thanksgiving Day from dementia. As with so many times this year, I found myself in my studio, letting my hands work out how my heart felt. The cold clay on this cold day, stiff like my father’s body. But slowly the clay becomes pliable, opening itself to shape and meaning.

I mostly make assemblages. The relationships between the forms are as important as the forms themselves. The works serve as metaphors for the interdependence of all things. When the pandemic began, I placed my forms on the ground atop a 12 x 12 foot piece of butchers paper. I nudged neatly arranged stacks with my foot, knocking them into precarious relations. 108 took form. The week that Congressman John Lewis died and my dad had to go to memory care, I placed more forms on the ground, again nudging them with my feet. Our Better Angels emerged.

As an artist, I am mostly self-taught. I build my geometric shapes through a combination of slab building and slip-casting. I use low-fire earthenware clay and slip (04) because it uses less energy. I hand- carve each slip-cast form to refine and sharpen the edges before firing. After bisquing several kiln-loads, I set the forms out around my studio, combining and recombining until I’m satisfied. I apply a cold finish of casein paint to the individual forms and then adhere them to shaped backing board. Built-in hardware floats the work an inch from the wall. The brightly painted backings mimic the play of light in our New Mexico skies.