Artists Statement/Bio

In 1996 I was at a dinner with friends. We began in earnest a conversation that centered around the internet (still young at the time) and what it’s possibilities were. I, an information junkie, was particularly captivated by the immense amount of information that was becoming available to, well, everyone. I wondered, at the time, if it was possible to gather, say, the name of every body of water on earth. And if I could, what would it look like? If I printed all the names, how large would the piece of paper need to be? So, with fits and starts, I did just that. It took me over a year, but I managed to gather the name of every named body of water on Earth. At the time I couldn’t do anything with the information. I couldn’t even get it into a single file without my computer crashing. Slowly, though, software, hardware and printing technology caught up, and by 2006 I was printing out my first pieces. They were typically very large (8 feet by 8 feet) but over the last 6 years I have developed a way to print very small, legible, archival print.

The size of the print is important. If the print gets too large, the “content shows through”. In my pieces I have to balance the image with the meaning that the text carries. I typically allow two portals or windows into the piece; the title, which informs the viewer of the source/content of the text, and a magnifier. Once the viewer has read the title and assured themselves with the magnifier that a small blue rectangle is indeed, Moby Dick, then they can essentially stand back and begin to engage the image. And what happens then is what these pieces are about. The mixture of the purely optical, subjective image with the objective, text-oriented information is at the heart of this series. Two very disparate, powerful ways of seeing are combined, I think, seamlessly. After all, “art,” someone once said, “is opposites.”

The advent and growth of the internet is also pivotal in my work. The mining of this ‘terra incognito’, lands unknown, creates its own challenges. Many of my large pieces begin with the creation of data retrieval programs, or ‘spiders.’ I send these out into the vastness of the web to collect a set of data that not long ago was literally impossible to gather. The quixotic nature of such an endeavor is always intriguing, satisfying both the detective and the explorer. Finally, the results, the massive plains of data, lassoed by a singular notion of content, formed into the abstract, satisfies the artist.

Education:
Bachelors of Arts, Environmental Biology, Beloit College, Beloit, WI 1985 (concentration in Ceramics)

Exhibitions:
Philadelphia Buyer’s Market of American Craft, Philadelphia, PA
February 2011

Santa Monica Art Studios, Group Show, Santa Monica, CA
November 2009

LIMN Gallery, Group Show, San Francisco, CA
May 2009

Philadelphia Buyer’s Market of American Craft, Philadelphia, PA
February 2009

American Craft Show, Baltimore MD
February 2008

Philadelphia Buyer’s Market of American Craft, Philadelphia, PA
February 2008

American Craft Show, Baltimore MD
February 2007

American Craft Show, Baltimore MD
February 2006

Albers Fine Art Gallery, Group Show, Memphis TN
July 1993

Mary Bell Gallery, New Sculpture Show, Chicago, IL
February 1993

American Craft Show, Baltimore MD
February 1993