Artist Statement
“There are… privileged places, qualitatively different from all others — a man’s birthplace, the scenes of his first love, or certain places in the first foreign city he visited in youth. Even for the most frankly nonreligious man, all these places still retain an exceptional, a unique quality, they are the 'holy places' of his private universe, as if it were in such spots that he had received the revelation of a reality other than that in which he participates through his ordinary daily life.”
— Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane
From pieces that are purely about the physical realm to those that tie together memory, sacredness, and significance, my entire body of work addresses space. My pieces are meant to spark curiosity and reflection about the importance of particular spaces as landmarks on one’s own path through life. These spaces become sacred to one’s personal mythos. When a place is visibly marked with an offering, like a shrine or a prayer flag, it extends beyond the personal into the communal. Other people clearly see the space as clearly differentiated from the surrounding environment. Whether the place is outdoors or inside, an installation or a small ceramic piece hung on a wall, I want to mark it visibly as sacred, as different from the space surrounding it.
My sculptures, ceramics, prints and embroidery use imagery and symbols that trigger the same emotional responses that can occur in a sacred space. The symbols are drawn from a wide range of cultural and religious sources and have layers of meanings many people. These pieces are visual markings of internal sacred space.