60 x 60
Portrait of the Artist

As a child, my siblings and I would play beneath white pine trees, jumping from the branches into the springy mat of needles below.  On snowy days, the trees formed a tent-like space, quiet and out of the wind where we sheltered.  In the summer, the sound of the wind through the trees outside my bedroom windows was music to me.

I combined those memories with the idea of sanctuary, solitude, reflection and preciousness.  I have etched my cedar and pine tokens with drawings and text based on other important memories of mine.  Each piece of wood, 3600 in all (60x60) is a repetition, a mantra.  It is through the practice of repetition that I have found focus and the ability to bring disparate ideas together into my artwork.

There is a lovely Chinese folk story that says Fate ties a red thread to a baby’s ankle at birth. The thread is connected to all the people in the world who will come into the child’s life as she grows.  I have symbolically incorporated the story into the piece by using red braided cord to join every pair of tokens. 60x60: portrait of an artist is a combination of memory and material.  The pine needle-muted sounds in the gallery space invited the visitors to stand still and listen, to experience art in a new way beyond simply looking at work hung on gallery walls.