More progress on my current piece...using it as an experimental model for a potentially much larger, taller and complicated instillation piece...

Edited Artist Statement

October 9, 2013

Death is nothing new to me. After I lost my uncle last year to cancer, I was plunged back into the dark abyss of what it meant to lose someone you love, something so essential and vital in your life that you're lost and have got to find a new way of living. Memories of losing my father to cancer as a child flew back and opened up old woulds and new questions about my humanity and the connection that I had with my loved ones who were gone. I have found myself time and again in an emotional fragile state in a cruel game of "believe it or not," pulled back and forth between being told my loved ones are dying and that they are not.

My abstract portraits of the human body became a process of healing, through which I became entranced by the distinct lines and shadows and creases and folds and the sensuality and life that they evoked. The emotional substance of the portraits become the heart of the work itself, expressed through its blend of colors and shadows, blurring the lines between what is known and what is not. My design process is an exploration of the ephemeral effects stitching has on my compositions, portraying the complex, delicate and sometimes invisible connections that hold our personal relationships together. Conveying a celebration of life and combining the papery thin fragility of its stature, my pieces transcend between concepts of life and death, the beautiful and grotesque and the mystery that lies behind the relationship between my pain at the loss of people I love and my celebration of living and those who have lived.

Here is a video of my three-dimensional piece so far...

Over the past couple of weeks I have been working exclusively with the matte gel and I am really happy with the results. The rough texture and crinkly surface of the material provides beauty and ugliness at the same time. It provides a sense of volume that the luster gel's smooth surface lacks...Since my last posts, I have explored two different forms of presentation other than the pedestal. I created a collage of larger prints sewn together which I tacked to the wall and am in the process of creating a three-dimensional piece by using clear fishing line to hang my smaller compositions from above to create the illusion that they are floating. I have inspiration to make this into a much larger instillation but am still debating about the details...a curtain effect? something you can walk through? be surrounded by?

I woke up to a surprise this morning! The matte gel dried with a funky wrinkly dry leathery feel, a much more textured surface than my last two pieces using the luster gel. The material is much less reflective which I think adds more to the illusion of skin...I tried out different stitching techniques and less structured patterns and added a different color of thread too...

I'm enjoying where this process is going and it seems to develop farther the more time I spend with it.

Took some self-portraits this past weekend for new material to work with and tonight I worked on the gel transfers for the compositions I picked out. These portraits have a lighter color pallet than my last two works...am trying out matte finish instead of luster so see if it enhances the skin-like quality of the pieces. Interestingly, the matte acrylic gel made the compositions expand when wetted; I'll see if they shrink back to normal size tomorrow. I'm still contemplating on whether I like the larger or smaller compositions....so many questions when you start something new!

Here are a few pictures demonstrating the gel transfer process of my pieces. After my coated photographs are dry I must soak them and carefully take off the paper on the back side so that the gel is all that is left. I am exploring the possibilities of size and how it may influence the intimacy and overall aesthetics of the pieces.