ABOUT
I was born in 1967 in Eugene, Oregon to very creative parents who were always using their minds and hands to organize fun group events and projects. Some of my favorite early projects were the collaborative dollhouses they made together for me and my brother every Christmas of my childhood. The best one was the haunted house, which had working trap doors, a hand-painted oriental rug, secret passageways in the fireplaces, and ghostly images in the windows made from old glass negatives they found in the garage of our centenarian farmhouse.
I am distantly related to ex-pat painter Mary Cassatt, so fine art was also a big part of my upbringing. As a child, I was fascinated by everything from the jungle paintings of Henri Rousseau and Picasso's abstractions to the more commercial talents like Sister Mary Corita, Peter Max, and Norman Rockwell.
Many of my happiest days of youth were either spent alone in my bedroom making collages, or hiking the Pacific Crest trail with our annual posse of 18 people. These days, you're more likely to see me walking in my NE Portland neighborhood. When I'm not in the studio I love to cook, do the NYT Spelling Bee, send postcards around the world, or tackle some project in my home or garden.
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photo 2014 by Robbie McClaran for American Craft Magazine
ABOUT MY WORK
I am a triple threat artist-- conceptual, production, and public art. Here's how I roll:
STUDIO PRACTICE
My studio practice explores the ways that humans attempt to control nature, and in turn, nature finds a way to adapt or reassert itself--such as the grass that grows in the cracks of a sidewalk or mildew that forms on an uninsulated wall behind a couch. I express these struggles through craft-influenced sculpture and installations. My anthropomorphized organics live somewhere between humor and curiosity. A physical object is often the foundation of this work.
PUBLIC ART
As much as I love to do what I want, I equally adore working within a set of constraints. This is how I live in the world of public art, where function and pre-existing architecture give me hard and fast parameters to work within. I have grown my years of experience with installation art into an exploration of durable materials that don’t make aesthetic compromises and are scaled to their permanent environments. Thank you, hands-on craft training.
BUNNY WITH A
TOOLBELT
Another way I love to work with constraints is to design my own product line under the business name (and separate web entity) Bunny with a Toolbelt. My lifelong love of handmade wood animals come to life as wedding cake toppers, book characters, and playing cards.
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