Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

My work examines the connection between identity and belonging within the landscape genre and re-imagines our relationship to foreign and native lands. My studio practice is two-fold: it begins with the construction of props and dioramas, which then become subjects for paintings. This process borrows from pictorial genres like scenography to make evident the artifice within landscape images, which often hold implicit messages about belonging, ownership, and consumption. In painting my fabricated sets I subvert our perception of what is a familiar place and emphasize the role of landscape in constructing ideas of home and collective identity.

While at Headlands

While at Headlands I will be continuing my current project You Speak English Too Well (An Ode to My Daughter), which has grown out of an interest in historic sites, their relationship to nation/state identity, and narratives of collective belonging. In this project, I am wondering about processes of acculturation and assimilation to a land that is not my own by birthright. Through looking at webcam images of Mount Rushmore, I am thinking about the very complex nature of the memorial in contrast to my children’s first attempts at drawing out language.