ARTIST STATEMENT
Having been imbued with the need to express myself creatively, I have found great satisfaction fabricating welded steel drawings for the wall. I appreciate tradition as it sometimes has its place, but my nature is instead to innovate. Taking formal drawing classes in my scholastic pursuit of the arts taught me the foundations of representation with line, and I chose to enhance that craft by building drawings from hand-bent steel. It requires a different sent of dimensional skill and allows me to work without a canvas and the need to place my subject in space on paper, allowing me to punctuate a physical space instead with my work’s placement. I appreciate the challenge of using minimal lines to display the gesture of my subjects, tactfully placing them to give the expression of three dimensions with the essence of two. I am endlessly amazed by how little line is needed to translate form that can be identified at a glance and enjoy the challenge of making something recognizable with as little as possible and using negative space to complete my pieces.
The gestures of human figure and the extensive breadth of sensation each connotes has endlessly fascinated me. I am attracted to and often use classical poses and body shapes, keeping my expressions of female form steeped in a tradition that has perpetuated for centuries. Much classical painting and female representations display females as smaller than their actual size, and inside a square frame. Subverting the compact packaging of women, I make my work larger than life and without a boxed frame, yet still reference edge by curtailing their shape at ends that help the viewer focus on their larger, softer forms.
I enjoy working outside of expectation, and I am a female using welding as my creative tool, and the cold and hard material of steel to express softness. People often expect women to braze or solder, as in jewelry making, but I instead appropriate the male-dominated act of welding to express myself. Steel, in and of itself, is a solid, rigid, cold material, and through my expression with curved line, I subvert the premise of the material’s expectation to showcase warm, soft forms of sensuous women in passive and active poses. I seek only to follow tradition when it fits and enjoy innovating and obliterating expectation, pushing my material and forms into unanticipated territory.
Having been imbued with the need to express myself creatively, I have found great satisfaction fabricating welded steel drawings for the wall. I appreciate tradition as it sometimes has its place, but my nature is instead to innovate. Taking formal drawing classes in my scholastic pursuit of the arts taught me the foundations of representation with line, and I chose to enhance that craft by building drawings from hand-bent steel. It requires a different sent of dimensional skill and allows me to work without a canvas and the need to place my subject in space on paper, allowing me to punctuate a physical space instead with my work’s placement. I appreciate the challenge of using minimal lines to display the gesture of my subjects, tactfully placing them to give the expression of three dimensions with the essence of two. I am endlessly amazed by how little line is needed to translate form that can be identified at a glance and enjoy the challenge of making something recognizable with as little as possible and using negative space to complete my pieces.
The gestures of human figure and the extensive breadth of sensation each connotes has endlessly fascinated me. I am attracted to and often use classical poses and body shapes, keeping my expressions of female form steeped in a tradition that has perpetuated for centuries. Much classical painting and female representations display females as smaller than their actual size, and inside a square frame. Subverting the compact packaging of women, I make my work larger than life and without a boxed frame, yet still reference edge by curtailing their shape at ends that help the viewer focus on their larger, softer forms.
I enjoy working outside of expectation, and I am a female using welding as my creative tool, and the cold and hard material of steel to express softness. People often expect women to braze or solder, as in jewelry making, but I instead appropriate the male-dominated act of welding to express myself. Steel, in and of itself, is a solid, rigid, cold material, and through my expression with curved line, I subvert the premise of the material’s expectation to showcase warm, soft forms of sensuous women in passive and active poses. I seek only to follow tradition when it fits and enjoy innovating and obliterating expectation, pushing my material and forms into unanticipated territory.