​Memory of Stones

​Materials: twisted paper and paper wrapped wire

Artist Statement: This was a temporary site installation at Celebration Park, Idaho. The wire and paper were woven into a connected series of shapes loosely representative of nests and installed in the crack of a boulder. The work was created through visual dialogue with a site which holds the memory of displacement and healing.  In this place 17,000 years ago, torrential waters from the Bonneville Flood surged through the canyon ripping away huge boulders of basalt and tumbling them into smooth round stones. Celebration Park is the place where the walls of the canyon suddenly opened up, slowing the water, and dropping thousands of huge rounded basalt stones. It is both a place of displacement and letting go. The people who lived in this area over the last 10,000 years created pictographs on these stones. The people themselves have been displaced from this location so that only the pictographs remain. 

Croning

Materials:  paper wrapped wire, cloth, wood, sea glass, amber, turquoise, found objects

Artist Statement: this mixed-media 3-D self-portrait explores the paradox of finding growing personal power with age while living in a culture that often seeks to make older women invisible or diminished.  The log used as a base and the veil of paper leaves around the portrait evokes connection to nature. The wire portrait is woven into natural repeating organic forms as it twists and bends around itself creating an open grid-like structure that echoes the strands of personal and collective stories that give structure and meaning to life and echo our interconnectedness. Inside the head are multiple items such as stones, keys, and copper wire shapes representing elements of the artist’s world. Croning has a kinetic element present in the cowl of leaves surrounding the head which can be drawn across the face like a veil to hide or disguise or pulled up like a crown revealing the face and interior. The crone’s wisdom comes from the combination of spiritual intuition, logical human knowledge, and balance between self and nature.