Curriculum Vitae

Statement

On October 2007 I traveled to Italy on a Fulbright grant to embark on a project that would thread together many of my artistic interests: trauma, memory, and physical presence. From October 2007 to June 2008 I lived in Naples, where I partook in the chaotic and lawless atmosphere of the city, a departure point from which to spend many days at the ancient city of Pompeii. In Pompeii I spent many hours drawing the plaster casts that were made of the people who were killed by the original eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, when Pompeii, Herculaneum, and other outlying Vesuvian cities were destroyed, and thus preserved for posterity. The plaster casts were made from the empty cavities that the original decomposed bodies had left behind, revealing their gestures, clothing, and expressions along with abstract shapes created during the process of retrieval.

In the restoration lab where many of the bodies still lie outside of the visitor’s view, I encountered many shattered pieces of rock, all lying about, some arranged in shapes in an attempt to reconstruct a fresco or ceramic object, others in boxes. Where did the stone or clump end and where did the bit of humanity and history begin? I found the process of reconstruction akin to artistic discovery. I began making black and white paintings that, like the fragments in the laboratory, were an attempt to discover human shapes within stones, and objects within boxes. The denial of color allowed me to concentrate on form and to keep the elements of painting simple, on a par with the deceivingly easy task of making forms out of the void.

Since my return from Italy, I have been working on a series of paintings which have developed directly from the drawings I made in Naples. During my reflections on the change of Pompeii from thriving port city to ruin I have continued to investigate my interest in the passage of time and cycles of history. I plan to name my current series of work “Course of Empire” after a group of paintings by Thomas Cole – a meditation on the overwhelming hubris of individuals, and the changing fortunes of life and history.