CURRENT

Current adventures in the studio during this snowy winter include various experiments for the launch of my shop cARTwheel studio which I’ll be bringing to various artist markets around Maine.

“Foundlings”

These mixed-media sculptures which float from the ceiling or hang on the wall combine various materials to suggest fanciful plant-like hybrids. They fuse organic materials (like seed pods, roots, lichen), with hand made elements (wire basket forms, vines and blooms fashioned from cardboard and papier mache) and up-cycled manmade objects (scientific glassware, bait nets, flea market finds).

“Garlands”

Whimsical abstract shapes hand cut from craft stock and painted watercolor paper are sewn together with thread to create chains (3 – 8 feet long) that can hang from the ceiling or wall.

Patchwork Paintings

This series of tiny paintings borrows indiscriminately from the languages of poetry and science. I paint and cut paper fragments — imperfect notations, colorful patterns — then piece them together in a slow, meditative process, not unlike stitching a quilt or an old pair of jeans. With ‘visible mending’ I celebrate the repair rather than hiding it and float the composition in a two-sided frame that reveals the small paper ‘bridges’ that hold the fragments together with glue.

At its core, the creating is a physical way for me to remedy and make sense and order out of living, to respond to constant change, to heal what needs attention, including myself.  This is my antidote to the news, the embodiment of enduring hopefulness, an opportunity ‘maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.’ (Mary Oliver).

I made this series of 6”x 6” paintings in conversation with a larger mixed media installation entitled Maybe whose sculptural ‘characters’ can be seen elsewhere on the website.