Body & Mind

I use my artwork to raise awareness and dialogue with the viewer on the unique lived experiences of women. I explore the emotional and psychological aspects of female experience and where that intersects with culture and equity issues. Some of my work looks at the body-experience of pregnancy, but other pieces are about the internal feelings masked or hidden from view that affect the body and mind. When I think about mental health issues, I think about the inequities and accepted norms of the past and present that have left some misunderstood and unsupported. In a world where female experiences have been dismissed or seen as weakness, and having emotions has been viewed as falling apart, it is time to look at and see these issues in a different wayMy piece Protected Speech (1) consists of two female figures with tusks instead of necks and heads. These were made with the coil hand-building technique and the tusks were cast from a mold of an animal tusk. The slip-casted tusk was added to each figure. I fired these in a gas reduction firing. These two figures were made as a pair and are in conversation. The space between them is as important to the meaning of the piece as the free-standing figures.My piece Body & Mind (2) is a free-standing torso form from my Pregnant Thought series. I soaked a cable knit sweater in clay slip for a couple of days. I then draped it over a plaster model of a body casting. The sweater fibers burn out in the kiln. The motion in the branch placement at head level is about the turmoil that can be in our heads at the same time the body and clothing seem grounded in space.The title of this last piece is The Body Keeps the Score (3) from the book title by Bessel Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. This book has changed my thinking about trauma. In this piece, I was thinking about how inner turmoil in the mind can cause physical symptoms such as pain in the pit of the stomach. Like many artists, what I pay attention to in my life presented itself to me through the making of this artwork.

Bio:
I am a Madison-based artist who works in clay, fibers, and found objects. I taught in public and private schools (pre-K-16) until 2015 when I was accepted in the Master of Fine Arts program in Visual Art at Indiana University’s Herron School of Art. Graduating in 2018, I set up a studio in my home in Madison, Wisconsin.I have developed lines of work that relate to my lived experience and my feminist view of the world. I have been obsessed with clay since the age of 19, and though I have worked in all media teaching art, clay and sculpture work is what I enjoy the most. Though working full-time teaching, raising a family and moving 20 times, I continued to focus on my artwork.I have shown at the Canvas Gallery at Garver Feed Mill in the Women’s Work Exhibition, Madison, Wis.; The Eskenazi Fine Arts Center, Herron School of Art and Design, Indianapolis, Ind.; The Gallery at the Stream, Edgewood College, Madison, Wis.; Milwaukee Institute Art and Design, Milwaukee, Wis.; Penn State University Student Union, State College, Pa.; Minot Art Gallery, Minot, N.D.; Arts Center, University of Wisconsin, Superior, Wis.; and the Duluth Art Institute, Duluth, Minn.