MFA Studio Art: Fibers
University of North Texas
May, 2009

Magnet Endorsement
Liberal Arts and Science Academy
May 2006

I seek to empower tomorrow's generation with the powers of creativity and ingenuity necessary to invent, prototype and design. I think creativity is essential to the human experience and that all too often it is over looked as something that cannot be taught or tested. We are not a square people and we are not meant to fit in a neat little box and yet our nation's public education system often tries to. Art is alive in all of us and has been since the dawn of time, our species is unique from all others in that we have the capacity for art and it is this capacity that allows us to invent and redesign.

In my own work I often start with a concept that is intimate and uniquely personal to my human experience, expand it to encompass a multitude of human experiences and then illustrate the emotative quality of that type of experience. My work started as purely hand weaving and has come to include a multitude of other techniques including cyanotype, deconstructed screen printing and shibori. In weaving I find the rhythmic process and linear construction of line repetition and color interlacement to force a slower process of creation which allows me to make decisions more slowly with more attention to detail. My weavings often focus on more difficult emotional states such as grief and loss because these feelings require a longer process of understanding and reconciliation. In my surface design work I allow myself to see the more pleasant elements of life, dreamscapes and positive emotions that are quickly understood and expressed. I have found this dichotomy of fast and slow concepts and processes to create a rift in my work that some view as irreconcilable, but for myself, it is this variance that forces me to remain active in my work.