Bio & Proclamation

Bio

Raised on a dairy farm located on Wisconsin’s beautiful Door Peninsula – as a child I was surrounded every day by beautiful scenery and a natural wonderland in which to explore. I currently split my time between Door County, Wisconsin and St. Paul, Minnesota. As a trained graphic designer, I began my journey into graphic art and printmaking in 2006 when I took a screen printing class to learn how to make promotional posters for my small business clients. So inspired by that first class, I began exploring many other forms of printmaking and continue to do so.

I exhibit my art at Two Bridges Studio & Gallery, and Avenue Art on 3rd in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, and Clay on Steele in Algoma, Wisconsin.

Proclamation

Experimentation with processes and materials is a large part of what comprises my art.  For me it is the physical and spiritual nature of making art and object that matters most.  The formal language of printmaking is my medium of choice. My two-dimensional and three-dimensional artworks utilize printmaking as the primary vehicle of creative expression and paper as the main substrate.  The multitude of processes that are possible with printmaking and the inherent qualities of the materials involved, especially that of paper, is an important part of my art and a constant subtext throughout. My art captures the unique marriage of process and image that is distinctly printmaking.

My artworks are studio assemblages – distillations from my sketchbooks, observations, photographs, ephemera and found objects. Much of my art reveals the close-up and minute details that I notice – patterns, textures, even the energy of the natural world that I have rearranged through abstraction.

My geometric abstractions merge hints of the historical with the contemporary using collage and chine colle’. These Post-Minimalist compositions explore the paired down tools of line and shape via color-field geometry printed over backgrounds of collaged mark-making, or found print ephemera collected from my travels and scrounging through antique stores and flea markets. These layered compositions are full of tension and well thought out intersections of volume and space that expose the histories of my compositional decisions. They yield a balanced completeness without the need of references or symbolic otherness to give them meaning. The results are akin to palimpsest where I build my imagery over previously inhabited ground, layering materials, documents, and images, then covering and nearly wiping out their previous messages and images, yet still bearing visible traces of their original beauty.

Sometimes I think as a sculptor, always I think as a printmaker. Making three-dimensional art allows me to articulate the elements of form and structure with my prints. I explore sculpture and design by applying my hand-printed paper designs to the surface of my sculpted wooden forms. Whether free standing or wall mounted, the scale of these sculptures invites an intimate interaction and dialogue with the viewer.

I am influenced by historical movements such as Suprematism, De Stijl and Minimalism, as well as by 20th and 21st century artists such as Ben Nicholson, Ilya Bolotowsky, Carmen Herrera, Ellsworth Kelly and Robert Kelly.