Artist Statement

The works are part of a series called Jardin Femme (Garden Woman). The female form is combined with other elements to explore concepts of identity, and to interpret and retell the life journey. The works also pose questions about the future of the society and the garden earth we share. Earlier works explored myths about beauty and aging, primarily questioning society’s (relentless) quest for physical perfection. The works focused almost exclusively on the female body form using the vehicle of a flower. Now the vision has expanded to observe society as a whole; questions about the future of the individual, the society, and the planet and notions of sustainability.

A garden is dependent upon two things: the laws of nature and the tender care of the gardener. Consequences of global warming and the political machinations that influence it; how we are polluting the air and water of the planet; over-fishing and trash dumping in the oceans; depleting the earth’s resources without a plan for the future.

Decay is another word for change, and change is a form of translation: the movement from one state to another. My works include images of deterioration, decay and death; in context the garden can be a metaphor that simultaneously references the consequences of inattention in the garden with the realities of the fertility, birth, life, and death that are natural stages of the life. The work does not focus on any one specific aspect of these questions, but flows among them with the dual focus at any given time both general and specific.

Many threads influence my work and thinking, influences consist of diverse and eclectic realms in visual art, politics, literature and science.

In a society dependent on the convenience of plastic, disposed products are found now throughout the oceans and are littering every beach on the planet. In the exhibition GYRE: The plastic Ocean Artists such as Judith Selby Lang, Richard Lang, Anne Percoco and others explore relationships between humans and the ocean from multiple perspectives. I follow the photographic works of Joel-Peter Witkin that transfigure horror through beauty; the medieval scenes of torture and monsters of Hieronymus Bosch; erotic photographs of Robert Mappelthorpe; paintings by the 17th century artist and naturalist Maria Sybilla Miriam. The artists Vermeer, Botticelli, Blossfeldt, Judy Chicago; and outsider artists Howard Finster, and Bessie Harvey. The work of Orlan, the French performance artist, who in 1990 began a series of nine aesthetic surgeries entitled The Reincarnation of St. Orlan altering her face and body; the writings of Naomi Wolfe, The Beauty Myth: How images of Beauty are used against Women; The Politics of Women’s Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance and Behavior Rose Weitz, ed. In the realm of science the weekly New York Times science page is very informative. I find kinship in the writings of Charles Wilson, author of Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge who argues for the fundamental unity of all knowledge and the need to search for evidence that our world is organized in terms of a small number of fundamental natural laws; and in writings on Chaos by James Gleick that describe a new way of seeing order and pattern where formerly only the random and erratic had been observed. I have traveled through much of the Near- and Middle East and am influenced by the history of those areas; I am also interested in history and myths from all societies that often tell us as much about the society as the historians.

The works are created using the medium of 3D modeling, built with wireframe, vector-based objects. No traditional photography of any kind is used. With the use of superimposition, refraction, and distortion as a way of simultaneous seeing, the medium enables the creation of surreal organic and natural forms that combined in evocative ways to arouse a visceral response.