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As single mother of three children, I received both my MFA from Duke University and my undergraduate BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with kids in tow. Literally in tow (to films, classes, computer labs, and film shoots). As well as augmenting my children’s education with radical film and media theory, the practicality of bringing my children along embedded the politics of eco-feminism into my artmaking process. Now that my children are adults My film work as shown at Perth International, Atlanta Film Festival, Indie Grits, Chicago Filmmakers, Athens International FF, Experiments in Cinema, EFF-Portland (Director’s pick), and in Lost Passenger Film show in Shanghai, China. My interactive installation, Temporary, was showcased at the 55th Ann Arbor Film Festival 2017. My writing has appeared in Chronicles of Higher Education, and in Poems for Patients, Ireland. Currently, I am completing a project that explores the power and limits of the shared experience of bearing witness to a stranger’s personal narrative in a support group or an art space. With dark humor and candor, the work explores the necessary relationship between storyteller and audience while portraying the raw experience of enduring the persistent unknown.
Work Samples (PDF)
MORE ABOUT THIS ARTIST
Artist Type: Literary Arts: Author/Writer, Poet; Media Arts: Filmmaker, Graphic Artist, Media/Visual Communications, New Media/Technology; Multi-Disciplinary: Multiple Art Forms, Performer and Writer; Teaching Artist/Instructor; Visual Arts: Photographer; video editor
Artist Style: Literary: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Prose; Teaching Artist/Instructor: Guest Speaker, Instruction for Children, Private Lessons, Workshop Presenter; Visual Art: Conceptual, Documentary, Experimental, Expressionistic
Artist Medium: Computer; Film; 16 mm and Super 8 analog film, HD Video,
Artist Statement of Work
Tell us about your work (style, approach, philosophy, subject and/or theme):
Reluctant conceptual artist, devout experimental filmmaker, educator, and curator, but above all, I am an avid metaphor maker.- drawing parallels between personal insights and universal experience, between a simple action and a complicated truth, and between you and me. My work poignantly intertwines video, film, and participatory/interactive performance with a raw aesthetic but remains approachable to the general public. My visuals are as lush and visceral as they are conceptual. My participatory work engages the community in meaningful connection and collaboration. My work visualizes the vulnerable, albeit ordinary, moments of fissure and connection within relationships- the relationship between artist and audience, self and community, self and family. I utilize text (mine or crowdsourced narratives) as a structure paired with poetic imagery to elicit a broader conversation about intimacy and exposure in context to societal pressures, technology, and our capacity or lack of connection. The dislocation between memory and documentation, the slippage between fact and fiction: sometimes, family lore and personal love stories fashion a more seamless story than the one lived. The juxtaposition between memory and documentation creates an alluring tension, a schism. I intend With my art and art-expeirences,I activate spaces for viewers to inhabit and confront their memories, and concepts around family, self, and identity.