Tell a little bit about how you first got into creating art.
I started as a dancer at the age of 4. I think my first artistic creations were choreography as I had started so young. By the time I got to college, it felt like something was missing from this picture. Being a geek for math and science, I think I was craving working with materials that could be built or formed.
I love thinking about a material, how it works and reacts or bonds with other materials. I think as I stepped over from choreography into art and sculpture, I was excited to find that
I could 'choreograph' (yeah super cheesy, I know) with the materials I was using, but I could also get really into the research and experiments with the materials themselves.
What artists or movements have had an impact on you?
In some ways, all of them. Love it or hate it, it all influences how we work. I have stopped going to museums and galleries with other people because they are so annoyed by my fast pace through entire sections and my abrupt halt and stare and contemplation at one piece for several — I mean several! — minutes.
I love repetition, I love that about nature, I love a fractal!
What is your source of inspiration? What themes does your work involve?
Water mostly. I am in complete awe of the calm and power of water, with its ability to patiently cut through rock over time, or sit mirror still, or violently tear up all in its path. It nourishes life and it takes life. It's funny that there is the religious concept of returning to the earth or to the ash when we die. I think the saying should sound something more like "from water you came, to water you shall return."
What is important to you about the visual experiences you create?Nothing. Once I create it, it belongs to the viewer and I have no control over that.
Do you work from memory, life, photographs, or from other resources? Describe your creative process.
I watch constantly. I think a lot of artists do this, probably through the repetitive training of still life work early on in school. But I find myself staring at the most benign things with the curiosity of a kid and the patience of a grandparent. Sometimes I look up and find others staring at me, perhaps wondering if I'm okay =] But I think it is this curiosity that leads me to see the repetition in everything. It is the repetitive aspects of nature that feed into my work. I love repetition, I love that about nature, I love a fractal! And from there I just create. I have no agenda, no hope for what will appear. I just do the work and the art shows up.
Do you have any artistic goals for the future that you would like to share?
To keep my hands moving and working, to keep experimenting with the materials. That said, most recently in my personal life, I have become somewhat obsessed with the idea that repairing one's belongings is an act of rebellion, so this idea of 'showing the repair' might end up in the work. We'll see since I don't really bother with what the finished outcome will look like.
