rough draft, first draft, scond draft

artist statement draft, november 2008

The objects in our lives shape who we are as we gather them into order and give them purpose. My work responds to this relationship between people and the things they own, how objects define a person's life experience and how they are in turn given value by the purpose they serve within that lifestyle. My role as an artist is as a storyteller: I use found and gathered objects as props to weave together narratives behind them and unveil the hidden social contexts behind their meaning.

I use drawing as a medium because it allows for the emotional capacity of memory without the tangibility of sculpture or verisimilitude of photography. Drawings have the potential to present a complex truth about their nature more vividly than the objects themselves because the medium admits the artist's head and hand. I draw on blank paper, with no context, in order to admit that the drawing is a drawing and to stage a conversation about the object as it is and not in relation to other things. Working in series affords me the same flexibility as oral storytelling because it allows me to consider different interpretations of the same idea.

My fixation onto objects with history compensates a disconnection I feel to my own. Loneliness and mortality are catalysts that inform what objects I choose to render and how I manipulate their rendering. By drawing objects I invite interrogation of what is missing. It is this dichotomy, of objects that exist only in the simultaneous absence and presence of another, such as holes, tears, fading, stains and wear that it the connective thread between all my work. This dichotomy also reflects my understanding of identity-- that we are equally shaped by all the things we are as all the things that we are not. In this same way, stories are told with intentional omissions, choice implies the possibility of multiple truths, and one of my drawings exists only in contrast to the shape of white paper around it. Evidence and existence are dependent upon the ability to be lost or absent.