In 2019 I was awarded the Meyer Family Award for Contemporary Art. Morph was the title of the 15th Annual Betsy Meyer Memorial Exhibition that accompanied the award and included artists Bill Gerhard and Hanna Vogel. Peak and Fall were featured in the gallery space I occupied.
Peak is made of painted, cut, and sewn canvas and nails.
Fall is made of painted, cut, and sewn canvas, nails, and rope.
Photos by John Carlano, Matt Seaver, and myself
Installed at the Philadelphia International Airport in 2018. Composed of painted canvas cut into spirals and resewn into conical forms. This work has been evolving since 2008, growing with each installation. At the time this was the largest version. Placement inside the plexiglass case also allowed viewers to walk around and see the insides of the spirals.
Photos by John Carlano
Current was an installation of works at the Buffalo Arts Studio in 2017. The installation included an iteration of the constantly changing and evolving spiral work, here called "Point," as well as 6 rope paintings. The paintings are on canvas hung unstretched on the wall. They gently moved and undulated as air currents flowed through the gallery.
The paintings included in this exhibition were created during a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. They were created through the use of canvas covered ropes and elements of chance. The ropes themselves are not in the paintings although you can see a drawing of one of them in the black and white work. As the works evolved I felt connections between the shift and flow of the imagery and the shift and flow of the river flowing past my studio window.
The ropes themselves eventually evolved into the piece Fall, seen in the section Morph on this website.
In 2017 I was awarded a Ballinglen Arts Foundation Fellowship and spent 7 weeks in Ireland. These works on paper were made while at Ballinglen. They are each 22”x30” watercolor on paper. Some of the works also include colored pencil.
In 2015 I installed a show at the University of Delaware in Newark. The show included the debut of Peak as well as a number of other works.
Collapse was created during a one week residency at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN. I cut and sewed 13 spirals out of industrial wallpaper over the seven days. The 50” wide wallpaper roll allowed me to explore making the spirals large and ultimately resulted in the work, Peak, made from painted canvas.
Bundle is made from paintings on canvas cut into squared tubes and bound to a stretcher with string.
Tarp was made from the scraps of Peak using a double seam I found on a canvas tarp I bought at a hardware store. This work, like many of my works, is both about painting and sewing. The labor and history of both mean a lot to me.
Interchange was a smaller grouping of large and medium sized spirals.
Peak was the first large scale installation of this work.
In 2012 I installed a show at the Abington Art Center as part of their Solo Series. The installation included Cascade, made from box forms sewn out of painted canvas and put together with zip ties. It also included Crazy, which was created from the scraps of Cascade and sewn together in sections. Both works are installed in new configurations each time they are installed. The show also included oil pastel drawings made during residencies at Acadia National Park and Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site. The drawing are 22”x22” oil pastel and acrylic on paper.
In 2011 I was awarded a Fleisher Challenge Show. The works included in this exhibition were created specifically for this show.
Shift in made from paintings on paper torn and stapled with more than 10,000 staples.
Two larger works are made from paintings on canvas cut and sewn together into new forms.
The smallest piece in the show was painted onto cotton knitted by me into a square.