I create water with pure, sustainable handmade paper and plastics. Paper and plastics are the natural and the unnatural; the life giving and the life destroyer, the dichotomy of life and death. Sometimes the creations are natural paper and other creations are plastics found decaying on beaches or recycled plastic grocery bags. Often the two are mixed together like microscopic plastics in our drinking water. My art is about choosing life or death.
Artist Statement. I am an international, environmental, papermaker. In 2005 I had the opportunity to teach art to students in Varanasi, India and I jumped at the chance. I subsequently painted, taught, and/or exhibited in Sweden, Denmark, India, China, Italy, Australia, Thailand, Ireland, the Netherlands, and other countries. I had a great desire to work in mixed media and conceptual art, so I went to Kendall College of Art and Design from 2010 for their undergraduate painting program and stayed on for my masters degree, graduating in 2016. In my final year at Kendall, I fell in love with paper making. Paper could be made completely sustainably. I loved the texture and translucency of paper. I made an 82 x 39 inch mold and deckle and vat so that I could make large papers, that both fascinated me as well as speaking to the enormity of the problem of water pollution. I began infusing my papers with trash from all over the world. At an artist residency in Australia, I figured out a way to make freeform paper on a long concrete covered walkway, allowing me to make paper of any size I wanted.
