statement

Frontiers Series

"The Frontiers Series" are investigations of man's interaction with the unexplored sublime, a landscape that is boundless yet terrifying.  They are not specific in their description of place or time, however they depict our interaction with an otherworldly landscape, one that is influenced by prophetic cinema, science fiction and survivalist grit.  I seek to investigate the sense of awe coupled with immense anxiety about the unknown, not through a fear of dying but through a fear of surviving.  The subplots of an otherwise master narrative consider the everyday; what would we harvest?, where would we live?, what would our ruins look like?  It is through manipulating the images digitally, through data bending and digital collage that I fracture the images, as a way to create a type of picture puzzle of limited information one might receive from a very distant location.  It is through painting them that I meditate on my own struggles with global conflict, strained economies, environmental uncertainty and political strife.

bio

born: 1980, Waukegan, Illinois USA

education

BFA-Painting Western Illinois University
MFA-Painting Southern Illinois University-Carbondale

selected awards/honors

2012 Winner : Arkansas Arts Council Fellowship for Painting
2012 Faculty Research Award: Arkansas State University-Jonesboro
2nd Place, Ceaseless International Juried Exhibition Centennial Gallery, Minnesota State Univ. Mankato, Mankato, Minnesota
Fredrick E. Layton Fellowship, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 2002-2003

selected publications

Fresh Paint Magazine.  Issue 2: January 2014
Bangstyle Independent: "Art/Soul" Los Angeles, California. pgs 75-76 2012 Edition/
New American Paintings Western Edition No. 84    Open Studios Press, Boston Massachusets
WomenArts Quarterly Journal, Volume 2, Issue 2, pgs 29-38. Spring 2012

selected solo or two-person exhibits

Frontiers,  Jan Brandt Gallery, Bloomington, Illinois, 2014
La Petite Mort, Western Illinois University Annex Gallery, Macomb, Illinois, 2014
Rumble: Melissa Wilkinson, Saint Joseph's University Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2013
Odyssey, Surels Place, Boise, Idaho

selected group shows

 Apocalyptic, Group Exhibition, Truman State University Art Gallery, Kirksville, Missouri, 2014
Nude Attitude 2014,  Peoria Art Guild, Peoria, llinois, 2014
Failures, Group Exhibition, Kresge Art Gallery, Lyon College, Batesville, Arkansas, 2013
 Overwhelming Captivations, Regional Juried Exhibition, Hyde Gallery, Memphis College of Art, Memphis, Tennessee,  Juried by Robert Hollingsworth of David Lusk Gallery, 2013