I made a career shift from a Creative Director role at Shopbop.com to the full time pursuit of fine art work early in 2012. I'm currently studying printmaking at UW Madison, and in the process of applying to several graduate programs (including UW Madison) to pursue an MFA in printmaking, beginning fall 2013.

My work, which typically begins at a drawing table or out of home in nature, ultimately comes to fruition as digital collage. I believe there is substantial value in the extra-human capacity of digital media. My current effort is toward deepening my existing digital practice while building fluency with traditional printmaking forms to create work that melds new technology and traditional media. Current work is printed digitally on archival fine art papers. In some cases the surface of the digital print may be worked on directly with additional drawing or manipulation.

My current direction has been strongly influenced by travels that took me around the world for 7 months in 2012. For fifty days this summer, I crossed 700 miles on foot, from southern France, across Spain to Finisterre. This prolonged experience with unfamiliar environment, physical pain, and social discomfort enhanced my connection to nature in an enduring way. It also solidified my interest in using art to consider and communicate with culture. In addition to immersion in foreign cultures, study of psychology and Eastern philosophies have nourished my present creative direction. I’m captivated by the perils of duplicitous thinking which breeds conflict and denies the universe that exists between polar opposites. What assumptions can be questioned and what bastard offspring created by locking opposing subjects such as human/animal, independent/connected, male/female in a room together? Mindfulness practice has drawn me to ideas of John Cage and John Dewey, who I’m revisiting as I strive to bring observational and experiential aspects into my work. I invite my immediate surroundings, found objects, and experiences as content and catalysts for creative action. Immersion in unfamiliarity is my lever to regress to a childlike openness to experience. Attention to the familiar, in contrast, tunes my senses to the extraordinary in the everyday. Through art I endeavor to remix experiences of these two sorts together with memories, today’s happenings, and ideas of the future into distinctly human and personal work. I want the viewer’s first question to be “what is that?”, challenging one’s tendency to label and move on, and for satisfying answers to arise through observation and imagination.

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