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A favorite photograph of mine is Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro sitting on the steps in front of Womanhouse in 1971. At that time, I was too young to join one of the most profound feminist dialogues in my life. However, every time I go into my studio I am forwarding that revolution. Looking back through history, I see time and time again how art is a powerful agent for reform and holds before us our ideals. I hope my art will continue to challenge us to cultivate compassion and equality between the sexes. My earliest remembrance of using my art to further my sexes liberation came at the church of my youth -- overseen by a distant white bearded god who neither desired a companion nor needed one to single-handily father the whole universe in his own image. Even at a young age I felt this false inequity to my core. My response: to cut out the construction paper words “God loves you, pray to Her.”, and staple it to a bulletin board in the main entry of the church. My brazen words proclaimed their truth to the painted cinderblock hallway for the briefest period before a pack of laughing boys tore it down. My adult years find me continuing the work of that grade school girl; creating for myself the presence of the divine feminine. Through my work, I pull forth from my psyche different attributes that I want to strengthen in myself, and ones that I want to affirm and have mirrored back to me. My art also provides a vehicle for me to investigate personal issues in my own life and to challenge patriarchal belief structures. Currently, my work is utopian, and imagines a world where women and men validate each other. At times I have instead considered narrating women's struggles, and to reveal the pain and anger of those struggles. However, I need to know that I can also imagine a world of love, equality, and justice. I have needed to create for myself what I am unable to find in my life, or what I need to have reinforced. Therefore, my work focuses on the promise of nonviolence by creating wholeness in my work. There have been a host of other painful issues that have touched my heart that I have needed to focus on, through the lens of a solution. I need to believe that a just answer exists. This is not to say that pain and tension are not to be found in some of my work, whether I have allowed it to coexist, or whether it has crept in on its own. To this end the hallmark of my work has been order, symmetry, harmony, and beauty.
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