Artist Statement
My current work in pastels is a series of expressive “portraits” of downed trees embodying a shattered midpoint in the cycle of nature between growth and rejuvenation.
Many of my images in this series are based on photos I have taken in Door County. It was there, along the Green Bay shoreline, that I first became intrigued by the forms of storm-felled cedars lying in disarray on the forest floor. The site is The Clearing Folk School, Ellison Bay, where founder Jens Jensen’s philosophy was to let downed trees lie undisturbed, eventually returning to the earth. I find a powerful beauty in their jarring brokenness, and I have tried to capture visually the sensation of a tree breaking in a violent storm.
In this body of work as well as in my previous fiber art I have sought out dynamic, abstract compositions in unexpected places. There is a connection—a creative throughline—between the architectural geometries I rendered in crochet decades ago and the arrestingly angular trees of my recent pastels.
My subjects in crochet are common architectural details; the compositions derive from my own photographs of public spaces. I have simplified these images by excluding much of the detail and rendering them in imaginary color. Using single crochet, i have developed subtle tone gradations by changing one color for another in each successive row. My interest in these is to transform mundane surroundings into the idealized places of my imagination.
Many of my images in this series are based on photos I have taken in Door County. It was there, along the Green Bay shoreline, that I first became intrigued by the forms of storm-felled cedars lying in disarray on the forest floor. The site is The Clearing Folk School, Ellison Bay, where founder Jens Jensen’s philosophy was to let downed trees lie undisturbed, eventually returning to the earth. I find a powerful beauty in their jarring brokenness, and I have tried to capture visually the sensation of a tree breaking in a violent storm.
In this body of work as well as in my previous fiber art I have sought out dynamic, abstract compositions in unexpected places. There is a connection—a creative throughline—between the architectural geometries I rendered in crochet decades ago and the arrestingly angular trees of my recent pastels.
My subjects in crochet are common architectural details; the compositions derive from my own photographs of public spaces. I have simplified these images by excluding much of the detail and rendering them in imaginary color. Using single crochet, i have developed subtle tone gradations by changing one color for another in each successive row. My interest in these is to transform mundane surroundings into the idealized places of my imagination.
