SKINS

ARTIST STATEMENT

I work in an auto-ethnographic manner.

The experience of being in the world fully and authentically requires abandoning our separateness from Nature. Each day we die a bit, even as we learn to live more fully. ( If we aren't busy being born, we are dying. Bob Dylan)

Working across multiple disciplines, my work uses traditional media, often fused with experimental materials. Swift intuition congeals action with technology and the living world by sifting through the detritus of my life. The camera is a sketchbook; a daily journaling of glimpses, barely audible sighs.

In the summer of 2018, I began to experiment with new materials. I was growing crystals from solutions of sugar water. I had dried rose buds from my garden so I tried to form flower crystals. Using new materials presented many complex issues, so I had many months of learning with few successful objects. I had been wondering if the botany book of my Mother’s father, “A Laboratory Manual for First Course in Botany” would have some possible ideas.

As I read into the book for the first time, I found a bit about sugar solutions which were activated by yeast in the air. I had been experimenting with new materials so that I would not use toxic materials , plastic derivatives or trees. The pressing use of climate issues was disturbing since my childhood when the Elms on my road died.

This work with skins, my new vegan leather has much reverberation for me. I guess the first thing is that the softness of it is like a baby’s skin . Wet, soft skin like the cual sac holding the ambyioic fluid. It swirled thru my fingers with it’s own life. This fascination of the wonder at this liminal process was compelling. So I can grow new skin everyday in my studio but what is it? Why does it remind every day is new life, new chances, new hopes? Perhaps, it is the saline memory we have of our watery origins? Connected to the earth through water envitro, we are at home in water.

We never wade in the same river twice.