CV

The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it.
- opening lines of The Waves by Virginia Woolf

The most recent series of paintings, titled How to Fold a Paper Boat, depict enlarged fragments from museum reproductions, drawings, postcards, tarot cards and other print materials gifted and collected over time. Within a shallow space, pieces of ephemera are arranged into collages and shadow boxes. Ephemera are items meant to exist for only a short time, but often saved for sentimental reasons. I consider each painting a poetic record.

Although my hand is not evident in the flatly painted surfaces, their materiality is generous. This sensitivity in combination with trompe l’oeil folds, tears and cuts create a slippage between the object and depiction. The arrangements are choreographed to create a space that is both discernable and disorienting. The juxtapositions of ephemera and compression of spaces cause a viewer to sense a loss of balance but also to find solid ground upon investigation.

It matters less what the fragments depict; it matters that they signify different modes of image-making and dissemination. This signifying is informed by modernist literature, such as Virginia Woolf, and the Theatre of the Absurd. There are many modes of representation on display, often canceling each other out, forcing us to consider an alternate way to establish meaning. It is in this collapse that I search for and hope to create moments of real connection -despite the impossibility of doing so.

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