My path in Life has meandered all over the place, even though geographically I have not moved around much at all. Some things have remained constant. I daydream a lot. I do intense work, currently in the field of domestic violence. I care about people and the planet. I feel my feelings strongly while attempting to contain them in a responsible manner.
I have dabbled with web pages in the past. In the late 1990s and the 2000s I had a site called Whole Child Learning, which focused on resources for providing a holistic approach to a child’s education. At the time I was homeschooling my four children. This time period is when I took up beading, and was drawn into a constant urge to make things (most were edible and do not remain, ha! Kitchen work…). I did not own any fancy camera nor many art supplies, but I would make small items – mostly unfinished projects, to be truthful. I loved mask making and figurative sculpture. Interestingly, now – years later – I tend to incorporate some of those creations into my work.
My photography has often been close to home. Home is important to me, and it includes the 55 acres of woods that I live within. These woods have permanently shaped who I am. Home, to me, also includes the environment of working in Bloomington, Indiana. For a while I thought I needed to choose and somehow reconcile my love of nature and the woods with my love of urban and modern imagery and scenes. Now I just say, oh well. The work I create comes from all facets of who I am. I cannot worry about fitting into a genre. I weave. I embroider. I photograph. I create digital images. I am a collage artist in how I live my life and so I refuse to worry about how all of the collage pieces of my life and work fit together into what I end up creating. Not everything I make is “pretty” or fits into any particular art style. It is simply what I create.
Currently, at the age of 66, I still live on those 55 acres, where I have had the privilege to not only raise four children whom I love very much, but to also live with a partner that has also connected strongly to family and the woods. I still work at Middle Way House, a domestic violence shelter in Bloomington, Indiana. My job title is Triage Specialist, and I will simply let my job title and place of work inform you as to what kinds of stories and realities I absorb each day. I cannot block out the stories and realities that I have born witness to. There is a lot of pain in the world and I try to do my very small part to help alleviate some of it.
I am aware that I come back to making things – a haiku, a journal entry, an embroidery piece, playing with my digital images, weaving, and so on – because creating something that never existed before is how I manage my inner life and heal myself a bit. I hope to remain helpful to others as long as I can, and making things helps me be persistent in fighting to improve things.
A major focus of mine has been on collage pieces. I have one in progress now that I just can’t seem to finish and I will show you here. It is a composite piece of things I have woven, embroidered and made into a mask form. I frankly cannot explain my art and this piece might not ever get done. Parts of it came into being over ten years ago, and layering it into this unfinished form started over two years ago. I look at this photo now and want to reach in and move some things around. Perhaps it is not chaotic enough, perhaps it is about trying to organize. I don’t know…collage combines chaos and organization together in a way that strikes chords within me. The process is what soothes me. This piece might not look much the same when I am actually finished with it, which suits me fine, since that is how life works anyhow. A large portion of my digital art will always come from playing around with unfinished pieces.
