ARTIST STATEMENT excerpt
My songs and visual art draw on my interest in human relationship, a lifelong love of folk and fairy tales, and my pleasure in wordplay, humor, and improvisation of all sorts. I put windows into small, important intersections of our lives through the stories in my songs and art.
A recurring theme in my work is the witnessing and reframing of emotional pain; humor and bawdiness also emerge. Knee-deep in our loss of privacy, intimacy, focus, and garden variety grief, both honoring pain and deploying humor are effective balms. I am interested in the scale and importance memories hold for us and in what may exist between discrete realities, particularly between sisters. What may seem muddled when approached solely through the head may show some clarity and perspective extruded through collage, poetry, and music.
In the way of classic fairy tales, one sister’s ally may be another’s obstacle, and we all have our magical objects, our heroic tasks. Memories form a landscape of our individual truths, and may show the seismic activity of a relationship over time. I bring form to these elements and artifacts of self and family, in ballads, drawings, etc., using the harmony and dissonance in women’s relationships as prompts. In witnessing our relationships through our senses, we may be better able to understand and accept ourselves and our sisters. This practice in accepting ourselves and each other enforces a strong woman alliance, for the better health of Earth herself.