Artist Statement
I am a sculptor and painter exploring strategems used by women to navigate social systems. Building on my previous career as a hat designer, I repurpose my technical skills to invite public dialogues on the theatricality of gender. Constructed with materials and color associated with feminine ideals, my work manifests the uncanny extreme that is identified with the fetishization of women and their clothing in our culture. By highlighting the semiotic mechanism of the cultural expression, my work creates a platform to reconsider the purpose of the conventional system of signification.
In my most recent body of work, I have been focusing on the importance of costume in the development of female identity. Beginning with the consumption of imagery, women often mold themselves based on an interpretation of power. Whether that power has a foundation in beauty, intelligence or wealth, we collect visual signs that we then reflect back out into the world in order to harness their faculties. Every time a woman projects out her version of those signs, she creates a new lexicon to be consumed by others in a never ending abstraction of the mirroring process. I am particularly interested in the shift when these interpretations cross the line into absurdity or dysfunction.
