About

I am an over-caffeinated drawer, printmaker, and red tabby enthusiast in Chicago specializing in multi-plate etching and woodcut.  In addition to my own studio practice, I am currently the Vice President of the Chicago Printers Guild and serve on the visual art committee at Awakenings, a foundation for survivors of sexual violence.  I am a recipient of the Luminarts Cultural Foundation Fellowship in Visual Art, the Illinois Arts Council Agency Grant, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) Individual Artist Program (IAP) Grant, and am a Luminarts Newberry Library Fellow starting in 2021.  My work is represented by Bert Green Fine Art in Chicago and is in the permanent collections of the Kohler Art Museum, the Smith College Museum of Art, and the University of Richmond Rare Books & Special Collections.

My work is simultaneously an act of mourning and an analysis of women’s body politics stemming from outdated puritanical literature, mythology, folktales, and buttoned-up Victorian superstitions which contemporary society obtusely clings to.  Women are portrayed as manipulative, their bodies and sexuality are demonized, and their roles in society are persistently relegated to motherhood at the expense of their reproductive rights.  Even animals associated with women are vilified.  For a long time I was fascinated with the Victorian perspective on death.  I found refuge in their symbolism and mourning traditions in my attempts to cope with my own sickness and past loss.  Over time, I began to loathe their stifling attitudes toward women, beauty, and death.  Death is not beautiful.  It is infuriating, traumatic, and an epidemiological product of social inequality.  

The masks, weeds, and hair in these works personify familiar tropes of female deception, unconfessed sin, and seduction.  The overgrowth of memento mori-inspired hair and flowers are oppressive gardens still haunted by beliefs society has maintained for over two thousand years.