My figurative work often explores people who are unnoticed. My eye is drawn to people who others do not see: unnoticed older women overlooked by the rushing crowd -- the invisible ones. To capture the images of these women, I disappear into the crowd. I draw on my pool of images of the elderly to create the narrative art quilts that have become my signature. The care I devote to each woman conveys legitimacy and respect and makes the invisible not just visible, but even remarkable. The time I spend with an image allows me to develop a character and imagine her story in order to get close to her.
With the pandemic, we have all become invisible, disappearing into our homes or behind masks. I find my thoughts drawn to parallels between the invisible women I have portrayed and their absence in my country walks along creek, forests and farm fields. I work with altering and adjusting my surface design process to explore ways to portray this invisibility—to make people disappear.
Elsewhere
2021
H58 x W72 inches
As people retreated behind closed doors with the arrival of covid lockdowns, I started exploring a process to make figures vanish as if into the mystery and anonymity of a mist. Fog intrigues me in all its forms: morning mist, evening haze, creeping sea fog, gloomy miasma, freezing fog that crusts everything in spiky white rime, vapors rising from creek or bay, thick fog creeping down the mountains and swallowing up the valley, or will o’ wisps that appear like sprites on the mountainsides. Stitching black fabrics, many overdyed, is difficult, but the resulting variations of shade, reflectivity and absorption make the artwork’s surface softly shimmer, reinforcing the effect of seeing through a thin mist of suspended water droplets.
I Must Go In
2022
40x40 inches
The extraordinary dark that falls on earth during a solar eclipse caused anxiety and fear before science explained the phenomenon. The darkened sun and moment of night-like darkness was seen as an omen. The dark eclipse-like imagery of I Must Go In represents the arrival of a pandemic along with isolation and fear.
The title is from Emily Dickinson’s last words “I must go in, for the fog is rising. “
In A Dark Wood
2021
H48 x W24 inches
Detail:
There is a certain disorientation for a migrant who will never be native. Living in a foreign culture, she is the other. How much to stay apart or try to fit in to and be accepted by the other culture? Where do I belong?
Arc
2021
H48 x W24 inches
A simple composition containing the arc of a life. While painting big strokes with brooms, mops & large brushes, the artist realizes that the marks laid down on fabric are embedded with the story of a peripatetic life that crosses oceans, moving from place to place and across time.
Detail:
Brocken Spectre
2020
H48 x W12 inches
Brocken spectre is a special natural phenomenon: a shadow cast on fog that happens when someone or something stands between fog and sun. From a four seasons series, this piece is early Spring, with mist and a surprise snow on still bare branches.
Danaë
2020
H48 x W12 inches
In Greek mythology, Zeus visited Danaë disguised as a shower of gold coins. I reinterpreted Danaë as a gentle, stooped woman walking a forest path. Each year at first frost, fields sparkle and the morning sun shines gold. Leaves float from trees like gold coins. The Autumn days remind me of Titian’s painting of Danaë looking up at a rain of gold coins.
Invisible (Disappearing Act III)
2020
H48 x W12 inches
With the pandemic, we disappear into our homes, like in Winter. Behind closed doors, others become invisible to us; we become invisible to others, like ghosts.
Defiant
2011
H70 x W72 inches
Of all the cities I have traveled to, Sarajevo intrigued and moved me more than any other. There, I watched the woman hurrying along, elbows out. I wondered if habits learned during the Siege, like her quick, zig-zag gait, were learned while traversing Sniper’s Alley. Defiant references the concept of control: who is in control, people struggling to stay in control, when things get out of control.... I explore the idea that some people, possibly entire classes or populations of people, are ignored to the point of virtual invisibility.
Journey
2006
H44 x W64 inches
The Long Run
2012
40 x 40 inches
Melancholia
2016
40 x 40 inches
Red
2012
40 x 40 inches
Gathering
2011
40 x 40 inches
Twisting the Plot
2008
H68 x W79 inches
Watching people in the Istiklal Caddesi in Istanbul, a finely-dressed woman caught my eye. My mind filled immediately with questions about the mystery woman: Who is she? Why roses? Where is she rushing to? What reason for her hurry? Answers start to unspool in my imagination. I recall stories about Agatha Christie’s time in room 411 of the Pera Palace hotel, where she hid a key under a floorboard. The key is said to open a box containing her diary with the explanation for her mysterious 11-day disappearance in 1926.
Twilight
2012
58 x 58 inches
Finding inspiration in the streets, I collect images of real people who are anonymous to me. I develop them as characters and create stories around them. As night falls, the woman with her cane crosses the deserted street. She has forgotten that it is winter and has gone out in just her thin red sweater and bedroom slippers, unaware of the cold and ice on the cobblestones.
Quilts Japan Prize 2012
Allusion
2016
H78 x W32 inches
Snow Falls
2012
H78 x W32 inches
Drawing on the Mist
2008
40 x 40 inches
Future Is In The Water
2012
40 x 40 inches
Cabinet of Curiosities
2009
H67 x W79 inches
Almost There
2010
H39 x W69 inches
The Saver
2010
40 x 40 inches
The Shopper
2010
40 x 40 inches
All The Cups Are Chipped
2013
58 x 58 inches
The pavers of old Sarajevo are worn smooth by centuries of feet engaged in commerce, religion and war. The people, some visibly Siege-scarred like the walls, are strong like the stones. I notice the old woman carrying bread home. She walks a crooked path. She swings her cane, keeping others at distance. I look up at the mountains that ring the city and think how what rained down from those heights forever altered behaviors, changed characters and left peculiar habits. I wonder why does she take the laces out of her shoes?
Weather In Her Head
2013
40 x 40 inches
Pack Up The Moon
2013
40 x 40 inches
With Abandon
2010
Overall installation dimensions: H59 x W120 inches
Individual dimensions: 8 x 8 inches, 8 x 8 inches, H59 x W25 inches, H59 x W30 inches, H59 x W25 inches, 8 x 8 inches, 8 x 8 inches
