I keep journals and sketchbooks, so it has been a natural evolution for me to use writing in my visual work. My first written drawings were informal sketches while doodling or writing letters to friends. The relationship between text and image has proven an endless source of ideas and inspiration for me. I have experimented with these ideas using various tools including a typewriter, pen and ink, found writings, postal stamps and rubber alphabet stamps.

Descriptive and suggestive phrases literally create my representational images. Letters create both spatial and literary passages, which provide a visual texture that is exciting and sometimes challenging to work with. Some of my art is composed using stream of conscious writing. Other works are created repeating a single word or phrase. I play with language until I find what is hopefully both a satisfying visual solution and evocative literary layer for the work.

 

born: 1979, St. Louis, Missouri

education

Fontbonne University, BFA, Summa Cum Laude

selected awards/honors

Public Commission, H&R Block World Headquarters , Kansas City, MO, 2006
Artist's Grant, Elizabeth Greenshield's Foundation, Quebec, Canada, 2002
Fitzgerald Art Scholarship, Fontbonne University, St Louis, Missouri 1999-2001

selected solo or two-person exhibits

Double Vision, Bonsack Gallery, St Louis, Missouri, 2003
El Bruc Series, The Wind Gallery, Barcelona, Spain, 2002

selected group shows

Selections from the Flat Files, Contemporary Art Museum St Louis, Missouri, 2006
Art Bar Artists Exhibition, Art Bar Gallery, Ithaca, New York, 2005
Black + White Invitational, Shaw Cramer Gallery, Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, 2005
SUBTEXT, Arts + Literature Laboratory, New Haven, Connecticut, 2005