About
My work combines fine craft with social questions. I render narratives from circumstance and social histories, interweaving fact and fiction, material metaphor, empathy and absurdity. Working across drawing, installation, video, writing, and public practice, my process includes intensive research, material experimentation, and, invariably, collaboration. Subjects have ranged from the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, to the language and sentiment of flowers, to the communal and sensory nature of the public bus in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Many of the projects are developed with other people and communities and evolve accordingly. Experience in the social sciences, particularly anthropology and ethnography, influences my immersive approach. Using material to embody the essence of the subject at hand, hybrid outcomes have ranged from a happening staged on a seismic shake table, to prints pulled from engraved Formica kitchen tabletops, to vinyl drawings on bus doors. Collaborators have ranged from structural engineers, to rodeo cowboys, to bus drivers, and, most recently, a veteran barbershop quartet.
Born
Raised
Lives
Minneapolis, MN; San Diego, CA
Education
MFA, Visual Arts, UCSD B.A., Studio Art, Psychology, Anthropology, Macalester College
Collections/Exhibition
Includes International Print Center, Luis Adelentado Mexico, Minnesota Museum of American Art, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego Museum of Art, and Walker Art Center,
Publications
Includes New American Paintings, Art Papers, and the National Endowment for the Arts publications