ARTIST STATEMENT
My work includes primarily painting and sculpture. My impulses are the same in the two mediums. I try to translate what I see in a chaotic and detailed visual world, whether in space or a figurative form and to simplify it into elements that are understandable and hopefully expressive of the subject I am tackling. My urge is to work toward the abstract while maintaining connections to the representative world.
My attraction to clay stems from the immediacy of manipulating the clay, allowing, forms, angles, shapes to emerge. I love the look off raw clay sculpture and could be content seeing the piece exist in that stage. Since that is not possible for preservation, I prefer to use simple stains and pigments that help emphasize the textures and hand marks revealed in the clay, much like the raw clay does.
ARTIST BIO
Born in Spokane, Washington, I’ve always considered myself an Oregonian since we moved to Portland 6 months later. Portland is still my home.
Art was special to me growing up. Though I graduated in Political science from U of O, after a year of overseas travel and work, I came back to study art and spent two years at Lewis and Clark College getting a teaching certificate in art. My favorite medium was clay and I studied with Ken Shores there.
I began teaching art at a junior high school in Albany, Oregon, but I left that after two years and returned to Portland State University for another year of art studies. I taught in an alternative high school program and at an intermediate school before receiving a masters degree in counseling psychology and spent the majority of my work years as a middle school counselor.
I began a shift in my life in 2000 and how I saw time and my use of it. In 2003 I Went back to school again, studying painting with Mark Andres and Joseph Mann and studying clay sculpture with Richard Helzer. Ben Buswell has helped turn me full circle back to my love of clay and that is what I have been pursuing most recently. My teachers have been incredible.
My artwork has been in shows in a variety of venues- libraries, the Japanese Gardens, PCC Helzer gallery, Multnomah Art Center, school art shows, special community exhibits, the Golden Gallery and the Lake Oswego Arts Festival. I have received special recognition in competitions at PCC and Lake Oswego Arts Festival.
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