Neurologists have determined that the old brain holds the seat of our most primal understandings of the world. Goodwill, safety, fear, anxiety, self protection, gravity, sexuality and compulsive behaviors find their basic roots in this lower cerebral core.

I make sculpture and drawings that tap this non-verbal place, provoking emotional, visceral and perceptual responses — an awareness of the sublime. These non-representational works are subtle, rhythmic, and abstract and often manic. The large scale drawings are fields of marks in a variety of linear media, each developed as a system that slowly accumulates to create an abstract matrix of perceptions.

The sculptural works are also drawings, expansive, three-dimensional works made out of wood, thread and wire. I am interested in the optical and spatial phenomenon that develops in this work, as it spans the outer reaches of our peripheral vision. The works also reference physical systems such as heartbeat, respiration, neural paths and psychological states.

I frequently return to the subtle distinction between drawing as noun and verb as a long held focus in my studio practice. This blurred distinction drives my fascination with an expanded definition of drawing languages and the resurgence of drawing in contemporary art. My collective body of work is an iteration of this language — a reassertion of the age-old desire to understand self in place.

My work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and abroad including the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, The Drawing Center, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sheldon Memorial Art Museum, Belger Art Center, The Writer’s Place, Macalester College, North Carolina State University, as well as venues in New Zealand, Quebec and Japan. My work is held in many museum and corporate collections including the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Spencer Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Art and Sprint Corporation, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Niwako Kimono Company in Nagoya, Japan, DST Systems, American Century Investments, H&R Block, and Mitsubishi Corporation, in addition to numerous private collections. My newest work has been included in exhibitions at Cynthia Reeves Gallery, The Drawing Center in NYC, Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville, TN, Mark A. Chapman Gallery at Kansas State University, and the H2O: Film on Water and Fabrications projects in New Hampshire.

I am currently preparing for exhibitions at the Tegnerforbundet in Oslo, Norway, a solo exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, and SoFA Gallery at Indiana University.

I have been the recipient of awards and honors including a Charlotte Street Foundation Fellowhship, two ArtsKC Fund Inspiration Grants, the Art Omi International Artists Residency, an American Institute of Architects Allied Arts and Crafts award, and a Mid-America National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. I was Visiting Artist-in-Residence/Head of Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2005 and taught for nine years at the Kansas City Art Institute. I hold a Master’s of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA from Miami University.

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