Biography:
I was raised in Savannah, Georgia and have lived mostly in the South. I received an MFA from the University of Georgia in ceramics and have spent half of my art years as a potter. Although I am formally trained in ceramics, I am totally self-taught in polymer clay. In both a fortuitous and naive exploration of this new material, I applied every technique I had learned in ceramics and subsequently broke every rule in polymer clay. This resulted in a brand new technique of using colorful and patterned sheets of clay-like fabric collage. The clay itself is paper-thin and tactile. When you look at each painting, the subject matter is clay. The background is textured acrylic paint. I try to use the paint in such a way that the viewer has to closely engage with the work in order to distinguish between the materials.
My work is made in a place of happiness. This has always been my most accurate truth. The inspiration is very simple. I use animals to tell the stories of both ordinary and special human events from Sunday dinner to Mardi Gras and everything in between. Sometimes, a bird is more than a bird.
