Artist’s Statement

Uniting these newest works is an examination of the origins of individual identity as a reflection of the origins of collective or cultural identity. Through a process of deconstruction, I return repeatedly to the earliest and most critical moments of individual identity development and the powerful role of those who choose to engage in this process… I look to infants and children and to the parents who give birth to them. In the debate over nature versus nurture, I embrace elements of both in considering questions of identity. Can identity be reduced simply to a cultural construct? While I assert that nature typically assigns certain fundamental attributes through biological or genetic codes, nurture has the powerful potential to either support or subvert those attributes.

As non-linguistic signifiers, works of art have the potential to be as evasive in their meaning as language. Individual interpretations of works of art are fueled by the course of individual lives, by the accumulation of memories, experiences, influences, and associations that are unique to the individual. In The Danger of Being Born, stones are metaphorical signifiers for human beings, bearing evidence of their being in the world. Like stones exposed to the elements, we are individually shaped and altered by our environment, an environment that can be unmercifully harsh. We may be scarred, polished, crushed, smoothed, worn down, discarded, and broken, and like stones, we carry with us the cumulative evidence of our environmental influences.

Language and wordplay is woven into a number of these new works, most significantly through titles as in a series of graphite portrait drawings titled Potential for Disaster: Razing the Children. These drawings are based on an exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Lifeless embryos and fetuses at various stages of in utero development are displayed in glass containers filled with formaldehyde and other preservatives. They are anonymous in their presentation, skin bleached of color. They float in a darkened and recessed space behind thick glass smeared with the handprints of curious adults and children alike. They become the “other”, a spectacle of the living gazing at the dead.

In hearing the title, it is generally assumed that “razing” is spelled R-A-I-S-I-N-G. This is a common expression referring to the rearing and nurturing of children. But the same sound represents the word R-A-Z-I-N-G, meaning to tear down or demolish. This is the spelling used in the title, reflecting the experience of children who suffer rather than flourish under the power and authority of parents or caregivers, whether biological or not.

The stunted or incomplete physicality of the displayed bodies functions as a metaphor for the unrealized or stunted psyche. Arrested and malformed physical development mimics an arrested and malformed development of self and identity. In the tradition of turn-of-the-century postmortem studio photographs, these portraits of the dead reflect my desire to acknowledge and memorialize the suffering of those who are most powerless in our culture. Through the process of drawing, I enact what I perceive to be lacking in the lives of so many wounded children – a soft and delicate stroke, prolonged patience in encouraging the face to reveal itself, and a gentle coaxing of form into being. It is a symbolic act of nurturing, breathing a kind of life and beauty into these blind and mute faces.