Textual Tapestries

Where to start? For many artists, the first marks for a new painting are the most challenging. For me, those first “marks” always come from the outdated print materials I collect.

I am particularly fond of vintage manuals, maps, directories, and ledgers—— the volumes of mundane materials that once directed our daily lives and the outdated “wisdom” encapsulated in these papers that now sit abandoned in our closets, attics and storage units. I think of these materials as threads that weave our past with our present, threads that disintegrate with the passage of time—both literally and figuratively— as the concepts contained in those materials have been replaced with newer ideas and technologies. Taking design cues from textile art and traditional stitching techniques, I create my pieces from many layers of textual materials and paint, worn back through sanding to represent the passage of time, a process that I repeat again and again, intentionally highlighting the abstract patterns, texture and color that emerge from that process. The end result is a deeply layered abstract image with hints of the source material’s stories lurking just below the surface.