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A matchbox, cardboard coaster, or the ticket stub
from a movie all serve as the bits and pieces of information that
represent my personal history, abstract and fragile. I grew up in
the Amish country of eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania. Days
were spent foraging in the woods seeking out treasures, discovering
and examining the creatures, collecting rocks, leaves, bones. This
experience led to my obsession of collecting the mundane and the
obscure because these items are relevant to a time and to a place
that I experience, and inform my memory, my presence in that space
making it tangible in the present. Disconnected from my childhood
home and constantly moving as an adult I find a deep need to anchor
myself in some place.
I collage fragments of these things that I collect:
maps, notes, cancelled stamps, old books, children's drawings, clothing
labels, love letters, buttons and pins and weave them together as
a bird constructs a nest. I use the image of the bird's nest as
metaphor. The nest is a symbol for home and that space becomes synonymous
with memory, loss and nostalgia. I use maps frequently because they
link the body to the land and to the physical space represented.
The individual is divided and classified within these geographic
spaces. The map represents my struggle ,a type of resistance and
a search for ownership of self, separate and unique from what I
see as a deluge of banality of images within our culture. However,
I understand that separateness only exists within my own idea of
myself.
The collage elements that I use are deliberately selected
from that which would have been or was thrown away, discarded or
set aside. I specifically include things that are given to me and
things that reflect that day or week that the piece was created.
I work on paper, wood and canvas. Objects are sewn, nailed, or glued
in place.
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