I am a self-taught artist and have been painting most of my life. I grew up in Miami back when Miami was still a pretty wild and unspoiled place, so I grew up surrounded by nature — the ocean, the Everglades, mangrove forests, colorful tropical birds, trees and plants. These are the things that inform my work to this day. Very few things make me happier than to be out in the wild, a little bit lost, hoping to stumble upon some cool skeleton or an interesting rock or fossil.
I moved to Atlanta to go to school and, after graduating from Emory University with a degree in English, have lived and worked here ever since. I began working mainly in acrylics and watercolors, but quickly began using found objects, as well as materials such as paper and fabric, sticks and rusted metal, in my pieces. When you place a shiny piece of gold paper next to a rusty hunk of chicken wire, a strange alchemy takes place and both are somehow changed. I try very hard not to censor my impulses and not to be afraid to try anything — from developing a new process that seems a little crazy to throwing in a color that seems a bit odd.
So, during the pandemic lockdown in 2020, I decided to stretch and began to work in clay. The imposed isolation gave me time for a lot of trial and error — time to create and develop methods for collecting, processing, and sculpting in clay on board. While I love pottery and the processes involved in making it, I became much more interested in figuring out how to paint with clay and find a way to make the clay adhere to board so that, instead of creating pottery, I could create sculpted paintings.
I began sourcing all my own clay from rivers, swamps, and kaolin pits, always searching for new colors of natural clay. It’s all around us, and the colors are rich — from the white kaolin and beautiful veins of purple near Milledgeville, Georgia, to the saffron-colored clay of the Yellow River. From the grey clay in the marshes of St. Helena Island, South Carolina, and Cedar Key, Florida, to the red clay in my own back yard.
As clay emerges from its natural habitat, it is alive — it’s sticky and it breathes and makes sounds. It is the accretion of millions of years of life, and it holds the spirits of all the organisms, trees, animals, and ancestors that have lived and died to create it over the centuries. To finish a wet piece and watch as, over hours and days, it moves and changes and cracks, taking on its final form as it dries, is the most fascinating part of the process.
I'm not sure where my work will take me from here, but that's what I love about it — I chose a long time ago not to tie myself to one process or style, so new discoveries and fresh impressions will continue to inspire me and take my work in new directions.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
2023, "Southern Clay," Solo Exhibition, First Existentialist Congregation,
Atlanta, GA
2020, One Earth/One Chance - 100+ Artists Standing for an End to Global Warming, Women's Caucus of Art for Georgia/Art+Activism