Her Story
My career as an artist has been peripatetic, just like my life. Although I have lived in Utah for over 25 years now, in my earlier life I moved every few years to such farflung places as South Carolina, Mississippi, Texas and California.
I studied textiles at Pacific Basin School of Textile Art in Berkeley, California; design at the University of Utah; and textiles and printmaking at Utah State University, where I received an MFA in 1982. After many years of making and teaching a wide variety of textile arts, I have now settled into making monotypes for nearly ten years.
One of the most enduring themes in my work is color, which to me is an eloquent language of beauty, spirit, emotion and surprise. The influence of ethnic art is also clearly evident in my work, particularly Japanese art, a fascination I share with many other textile artists and printmakers.
My monotypes are often embellished with oil glazes, ink (sometimes with writings) and collaging. I create imagery chiefly by inking, painting, and drawing onto a plate and by using hand cut paper stencils. These stencils sometimes become interesting little prints themselves and may eventually find their way onto another piece as a collage element. There is vast invent-ability in the monotype form, which really has no formal rules like other forms of printmaking.
The majority of my work is representations of people, particularly women, but also men, children, and clowns in all shapes and sizes and beautiful, ugly, funny-looking or entirely fanciful. They are not traditional portraits. I usually use photographs of faces I find interesting as a taking-off point for creating fictional characters. There can be several versions of the same person in different moods, assorted costumes, even different races or ethnicities. I look for inspiration to every kind of human representation, including stylized Japanese prints, modern and traditional Western art, and masks and other cultural variations in personal appearance. I love hats, hair and costumes, all of which contribute to the emotional tone of a piece.
For my still lifes and abstracts, I rely much more on paper stencils, which are "scissor drawings" of the imagery. Each of the shapes-flowers, vegetables, bowls, pots, and other forms--is inked, printed or painted and then carefully collaged onto the pre-inked printing plate. The plate is placed on the press bed, covered with paper, and run through the press. If everything stays put, the ink all transfers to the paper, and I have my print.
I love doing groups of these still lifes from time to time, because they are all about color, shape, space, and thought. There is a lovely little embossment created by each paper shape, whether it is a piece of heavy Bristol board or a textured or embossed Japanese paper.
The collages, like the writings, just show up from time to time when the stars are in just the right place, and a really special piece needs a certain finishing touch.
