STATEMENT OF WORK

Try again. Fail again. Try better.   
— Samuel Beckett  

Flip the awkward. Always flip the awkward if you can. 
— Amanda Seales  

Like vaudeville or comedy acts, my work is beaded together to provide variety, rhythm and pace.  The slippages and tumbles between the many objects, paintings and videos (“scenes”),  become an affair full of shaky balance and sleight of hand. There’s a droll bagginess to the objects that is feather-light but always tough. The discoveries and inventions made during the choreography of any object can turn; everything moves everywhere. Working within and upon every surface finds the burlesque in this ongoing project, a tap dance made with the softest shoe. 
  
I was taught to “make do” at an early age. My love for the strange beauty of hand-me-down things with their missing pieces, leads me to play, transform, and find new meanings for the fragments to embody. They’re made from recycled fabric and other found materials. The language of abstraction runs up against the visual syntax of comedy–odd proportions, skewed juxtapositions and awkward relationships. The reconfigurations are unpredictable and surprising, sometimes weirdly funny but also sad. Familiar may become unfamiliar, humorous may become pathetic, as are the unpredictable turns and ambiguities of living. Humor shifts the frame, disrupting conventional thinking to question cultural values that privilege success over failure, goal-oriented tasks over play, and conformity over creative activity. Comedy and empathy are ever allies.