Artist's Statement
For many years I have used the human body to explore themes of strength
and vulnerability. In the new series of drawings and sculptures, The Plain
Sense of Things I have moved further from the external human form to
the
internal, exploring the visual and emotional connection between images
and the deep cellular workings of the human brain.
As an artist-in-residence at Joseph LeDoux’s neuroscience laboratory
at
New York University I have observed and recorded dense images of the
amygdala, the part of the brain where fear and anxiety reside, and from
those images drawn through high-powered microscopes, created a series
of layered drawings.
These reflect new ways of seeing parts of the brain invisible to all but
a
handful of scientists who are searching to find patterns among seemingly
random collections of neurological communication.
The sculptural works in this series incorporate information from the
drawings as well as a wide variety of sources such as patterns from the
craft of Victorian mourning braiding, sound/language configurations from
lab procedures, an ancient “secret” language created by women
in China’s
Hunan province.
In the same way that scientists search deeply among the images for clues
to a larger pattern I am trying to find a personal organizing model using
the
lens of my imagination.
Title from The Plain Sense of Things by Wallace Stevens