A box with layers of lace, tatting, and crochet. Another filled with hundreds of brightly colored bingo chips. Two boxes containing five years of small leftover scraps from previous collages each placed in tiny plastic baggies as if they were delicate specimen. One box containing discarded paper slide mounts. A heavy box full of trimmed edges from a recent catalog print job. A few hatboxes filled with broken costume jewelry, rhinestones, and buttons. Hoards of plastic flowers, feathers, and doilies. Three bags stuffed with tassels.

A few years ago, my entire studio was packed into boxes and shifted across town in borrowed vans and trucks. As I unpacked, I was overwhelmed by sheer number of materials that have been accumulated. Through this devotion to collecting, my work has increasingly become a cabinet of curiosities. I find myself consumed in a process that is centered in pieces, in parts, in micro / macro relationships.

As I rummage for materials at thrift stores, I think about the botanist searching for a rare or unknown species. The archeologist uncovering layers of debris, utilitarian objects, and cultural expressions. I am struck by how many of the found materials I collect – whether handmade or manufactured – are directly inspired by nature. Much like rings on a tree trace growth, they plot our existence within and relationship to nature. As we fill our homes with nature-inspired crafts, flower arrangements, and other elements, we seek to celebrate its beauty while simultaneously asserting a control that prioritizes distance from nature’s uncontrollable wildness.

Beyond an interest in forms derived from nature, I am drawn to the processes of change and evolution, the relationships to a larger order within natural systems, and the concept of time in these processes and systems. One series of forms might be inspired by observation of plant life or botanical illustrations and others by decorative manuals for Victorian floral painting, needlepoint, and flower arranging techniques. Derived from the natural and artificial, forms gleaned from these sources are repeated, dissected, and morphed mimicking the process of creation and evolution.

Collage pushes the additive and subtractive aspects of the artistic process – it is additive as elements are glued onto the surface and, conversely, subtractive as they are removed to leave behind a residue, scratched into, or destroyed. Collage provides a sense of touch, both through surface implications and the physical construction process. With the combination of collage and assemblage, painting and drawing, and additional mixed media I am able to explore contrasts such as gestural and controlled, familiar and unknown, material and illusion, natural and artificial.