about

The work that I do is a compulsive result of my excitement upon recognizing patterns and relationships within the world around me, particularly the visual patterns that exist in nature.

We are surrounded by fractal patterns. I’m specifically fascinated by the repetition and self-similarity that I find when rummaging through bins of textiles, eating my vegetables at dinner, or when noticing anonymous piles of trash. In general, I think that we naturally seek order and understanding. We search for patterns around us and we associate things/ideas to each other—doing so organizes what initially seems like chaos. Finding some interconnectedness within seemingly unrelated details helps many of us feel content with our existence, and for some, may fuel an intense sense of wonder.

Geology has always interested me. I use rock thin sections as a point of departure because I think they’re some of the most visually interesting things I’ve ever seen. Finding these images in a book for the first time was an epiphany for me—noticing that at any given distance I could find landscapes repeating and that these landscapes are essentially composed of the same elements. Examining these images and reading a little about optical mineralogy, I found that I admire certain anisotropic minerals in cross polarized light for their intense and interesting color relationships. Maintaining a sense of those relationships within my work is important to me.

The idea to hand color and cut paper came from seeing Henri Matisse’s large les gouaches découpés (paper cutouts). Creating cut-paper compositions inspired by thin sections seems like a fitting technique⎯consolidating painted pieces of paper to make a greater image reminds me of how minerals make up a rock; whereas extreme pressure, heat and/or water is required for that, all I have to use for this is patience, an x-acto, and archival tape.

2010