Sculpture/Installation/Bookwork | 1988-2003
The work from this period is an exploration of the real. Real space, real things. I extended drawing into three-dimensions using common, primarily organic objects associated with the domestic sphere: soap, nuts, beans... and books.
Solo exhibitions of this work include Five Works, Susan Schreiber Gallery, New York (1990); Recent Work, Jamison Thomas Gallery, New York (1991); Undercurrent, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janeiro (1995); and Secret Ears, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn (1996). Two and three-person shows include The Sculptural Body, Stark Gallery, New York (1992) and Felt Works, Kristen Frederickson Fine Art, New York (2003). Group shows include Simply Made in America, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut (1993); Conceptual Textiles: Material Meanings, Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin (1995); Norfolk '97, Yale Summer School of Music and Art, Norfolk, Connecticut (1997); Endpapers: Drawings 1890-1900 and 1990-2000, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York (2000); In the Making: Contemporary Drawings from a Private Collection, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts (2003); and Sum of the Parts, Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art, Portland, Oregon (2015).
Artist Statement - 1993
I am interested in transformation.
I am interested in things being what they are.
What I’m after then is a transformation of perception.
To see everyday objects as if for the first time:
To be amazed by a peanut.
Artist Statement - 1994
I consider my drawings to be sculptures because they are built and my sculptures to be drawings because they are linear, gestural and have to do with mark making and placement.
In all my work I am concerned with the hand— what is held and what is felt; with hiddenness and exposure; with randomness, accidents and precise, deliberate orderings. I use repetition as a means of moving through space and I appropriate natural objects such as peach pits, peanuts, lima beans, and cherry pits, which are seeds or contained essences with the potential for growth or transformation. Their incorporation in my work, however, negates this possibility.
I use needle and thread to capture, control and isolate, and I also leave them to dangle. Loose ends are an invitation to relatedness.
Bookwork - 1995
Books: An opportunity to turn a cerebral situation sensual or to be physical in the realm of the studious.
Books— objects of reverence— provide an irresistible impetus to transgress. I like to change the terms, re-contextualize.
Books are intimate objects; I want my books to offer intimate experiences.
Books provide excellent raw material with which to explore the simultaneous and contradictory impulses for hiddenness and exposure.
My books are non-fiction; they house real facts: rocks, leaves, peanuts, sugar cubes, a beeswax walnut, a doll’s leg.
It is the quality of the unexpected that adjusts the 'reading.'
H.W. Janson’s History of Art - 1991
Janson’s History of Art has been emptied of Art History and replaced with beeswaxed sugar cubes. The sugar cubes are cocooned little larvae that have devoured Art History for their own purposes. The architecture section (which is at the end of the book) remains untouched. They weren’t interested.
Untitled Floor Piece #1 - 1993
I bought 10’ of 84” linen and placed it on the floor: a field.
I drew parallel lines in pencil every 4” and ‘planted’ lima beans between them.
14 rows of 18 each.
I trapped each of the 252 with needle and white thread.
As no two beans are shaped exactly alike, it was necessary to formulate a different strategy for the capture of each bean.
I sewed on the floor with the linen on my lap.
I started from one end of the field, worked to the midpoint and then worked in from the other side.
As I gathered the linen into my lap it became increasingly wrinkled like the surface of restless water— beans buoyant in waves on top.