Perfomrance with studio-based drawing, Woods (Rabun, Georiga), 2009

This  image captures a performance enacted with studio-based drawing, Woods (Rabun, GA) 2009.  The drawing itself  is an energetic impression of the woods of Rabun, Georgia, a depiction of how my body remembers a site. When in the woods, I often perform private intimate rituals of embedding my body within the landscape to deepen my physical and sensory connection to the land.  My intellect is quieted and my  body enters into a silent conversation with the cycles and rhythms of nature.

The act of inserting the body into urban studio-based work recalls the act of  merging body with organic landscape yet reflects the urban environment and mediated experience.  Markings on my body are made with similar manufactured and industrial materials that were also used in the making of the drawing.  The body is a bridge that links studio practice with practices in the remote woods of northern Georgia and accentuates the distinct and different energies of organic and urban environments.

These images represent two separate but related performances.  The photograph on the left represents my practice of merging body and landscape in the woods of Rabun County, Georgia.  My intention in this practice is to blur the boundaries between nature and self in order to explore the quiet unfolding relationship between the body, earth and intuition. The image on the right represents a performance in which my body is inserted into a studio-based drawing, Woods (Rabun, Georgia), 2009.  The drawing, an energetic imprint of the woods of Rabun, Georgia, is made from predominately manufactured and man-made materials.  In both performances, the body mirrors and mimics its surroundings,  further highlighting the distance between urban environments and remote organic spaces.  

Woods (Rabun, Georgia) mixed media/ collage on paper

My process involves traveling to remote woods in North Georgia  and opening myself to connecting to place; to the plants, animals, soil, rocks and leaves.  I open my senses to receive the distinct fecund scents, the rush of wind through the cells in my skin, the call of birds and tremble of wings, the chorus of leaves and the bare earth under my feet.  I set the intention of feeling and sensing the silent conversation between things and insert my own body and being into the dialogue.  I can feel the rhythms and cycles of nature and how my body innately understands and matches its own breathing to the breath of the landscape. What can feel like thick impenetrable boundaries between inner-self and outer world begin to soften as self and environment bleed into one another.  My body knows and remembers the earth.  I employ different techniques to facilitate the connection:  I press my chest against the soil to feel the heartbeat of the earth; paste leaves and sticks on my skin to feel the flesh of the world; and sometimes use pigment applied to my own body to mimic the bark of a tree.  I am interested in the unfolding relationship between self and nature. 

When I return to my urban-based studio, I attempt to recreate my experience in the woods.  I use man-made materials such as felt tip markers, stickers, metallic paint, processed wood and neon color, as well as organic materials such as collected sticks, sand, soil, grass, bark and organic inks to explore the distance between and intersection of manufactured landscape and organic environments.  At times, I reinsert my own body in the piece to further highlight the distance between urban and remote spaces. Through a process of deep surrender I use my body and energy to reengage the sense of connection I felt while in the organic world within an artificial environment.  

Initiation, 2008. Watercolor and graphite on paper. Fabric, rawhide, golden thread, my cat's fur, threaded beads, ornate gold detail, black feathers. 3' x 2'.

There are two elements to Initiation - the drawing/painting and the handmade object. In both I weave together parts of myself with parts of an animal. The idea of seams is important in my work. My intent is to create an image for the viewer to wonder over. For example, is this a headdress or an attack? Through formal properties and juxtapositions I deny resolution. By doing so the fantasy comes apart at the seams, unraveled just enough to reveal that the meaning is in the combination.

These seams are made visual through disjointed overlaps of realities, transparencies, and refractions. Automobiles may pass behind a fantastical performance, while mass-produced, kitsch ornamentation is used to pay tribute to drawings of ancient figures. Odd combinations, such as drawings of realistic anatomy combined with handcrafted decorations, echo the hybridity of the beings depicted in my images. This work is not about creating a separate fantasy world but longing and wonderment for other possibilities.

Throughout my work I repeatedly use the image of the centaur, the feral, and the early hominid. Although the centaur is half human, half animal the two parts remain separate inside one being. The feral is also a combination of animal and human, of wild and domesticated. But without resolving into one or the other, the feral exists as something new. As is my work, it is a combined state of neither and both.

Through drawings, video and sculpture, I collapses time and space to create a narrative across eras that explores the mutability of biological form. My quasi-pre-historical, romanticized narratives create a dramatic record of desire and aggression that questions the boundaries of gender, species, and self-identification.

Themes of hybridization and connection run throughout my work, both visually and conceptually. Creating complex amalgams of animal and human, fantastic and realistic, handmade and mass-produced; my narratives entwine mystical experience, natural sciences and daily life. I use fantasy as a strategy to locate the narrative in a borderless, undefined space.

I repeatedly use the image of the centaur, the feral, and the early hominid. These slightly altered states of human being intrigue me as they offer options for existence; a mode of being more connected to our animal selves. This drawing “Barrier Island” is a self portrait created upon return from my solitary stay on Assategue Island. Assateague is a barrier island off the coast of Maryland renowned for free-roaming feral horses. Camping there with no human contact, I became absorbed into the ebbing and flowing of sea water and wildlife. By falling in tune with the daily rhythms of the place and, by extension, the natural world I was no longer a separate being but part of the island.