Process
I grew up around craftsmanship and creative processes in the studios and workshops of my mother (a furniture builder) and my neighbors (an array of painters, potters, woodworkers and more).
To this day I love looking at the sketches and prototypes of my favorite artists. Seeing their process not only gives insight to their inspiration and development but can also reveal an artist’s more expressive side. Early sketches and quick notes can exude personality and uncensored, unrefined creativity.
Beyond concept development I also enjoy seeing an artist “build” their work. This phase in any art project is where we see an artist ply their craft. Craft and technical skill are sometimes overlooked at this time in art history when concept (not execution) is supreme.
2015: Linocut Print Process
In the summer of 2015 I was commissioned to create a new art piece. The couple commissioning the work was going to give the piece to a dear friend who had officiated their wedding. We discussed all the themes they wanted to get across in the work, most importantly friendship and community. We all agreed these themes have a lot of cheesy design solutions attached to them and we wanted to avoid common tropes. The challenge: create a piece about friendship and community that wasn't tacky, overly sentimental, but still deeply meaningful to everyone involved.
2014: Photo Collage and Drawing
The Mark Series is an ongoing exploration into combining photographs of the human form with expressive line drawing. The compositions strive to transform the human body into an almost abstract shape or “mark” isolated on the page by the prominent surrounding negative space.
Layers of recycled paper are used to build up texture on the page. The photos themselves have been printed rescanned and printed again to create texture and degrade the original photo quality. The line drawing over the photography is informed by the form of the body, in some cases it points to bone and muscle structure. Primarily the drawings serve to add handmade expression to the photographs and push the image closer to general form rather than explicit human bodies.
2012: Woodcut & Writing Collaboration
This piece was created for the 2012 exhibit "Worth Telling" pairing NYC artists and writers. This woodcut is a reaction to a short piece written by journalist and human rights worker Jimmie Briggs. The exhibit was at the Abrazo Interno Gallery in New York City, NY.
2011: Woodcut Reduction Print Process
I was commissioned to create a semi-abstract piece of art in the summer of 2011. This was a new and unique challenge for me as almost all of my work before this time had been figurative. The client’s were looking for a piece that would evoke the ocean and incorporate light, movement and a sense of hope. It was also important that the piece wasn’t too literal and somewhat abstract.
I drew a great deal of inspiration from friend and painter Shannon Craig. Her treatment of wind whipped clouds was in my mind when I began sketching. I owe my patrons on this project for pushing me in a new and different direction, I am still playing with permutations of this piece in my work today.
2010: Woodcut Series Photojournalism Collaboration
My friend Christina Boyle was one of the first American journalists to arrive in Port-au-Prince after the Haitian earthquake in 2010. Weeks later, back in NYC and visibly shaken she recounted to me the dire reality she had witnessed in Haiti.
This conversation began the process of developing the Pont-Rouge Portrait Project, an art project, a collaboration and a fundraising effort.
Photojournalist David Goldman connected me with award-winning photographer Q. Sakamaki.Q. had shot portraits of Haitian earthquake survivors at Pont-Rouge Displaced Persons Camp. I created seven large-scale woodcut portraits based on Q.’s work.
In September we exhibited our work side-by-side and held a fundraising art auction benefitting the grassroots organization Haitian Support Project. The exhibit was held at Powerhouse Arena in DUMBO, Brooklyn.
After reviewing the sketch development my client's had two inspired insights that changed the piece from this point forward. 1) They wanted to have more sense of ground, giving the composition more space to breath. 2) They thought of including water and infrastructure, real systems that maintain living, breathing communities. This drawing also includes the homes of everyone involved in the project.