Artist Statement

“The sea is smooth,” Ramo said. “It is a flat stone without any scratches.” My brother liked to pretend that one thing was another. “The sea is not a stone without scratches,” I said. “It is water and no waves.” “To me it is a blue stone,” he said. “And far away on the edge of it is a small cloud which sits on the stone.”

My work combines textiles and drawing media. I am more interested in the process of drawing, making lines and marks, than specific techniques that allow us to pretend that what we are seeing is not flat. I’d rather explore flatness. I go through cycles of collecting, making, and destroying the things I make by cutting them apart and reorganizing them. The results do not represent anything from the visible world. They represent the process by which they were made. The materials I choose, fabric, paper, and drawing media, lend themselves to this kind of representation.

There are two impulses that began my recent works. The first was to make drawings that are pretending to be paintings and sculptures.  I have never made traditional paintings or sculptures, so, that idea fascinated me. The second impulse was to empty out my studio. I used Start Pretending to mark time in my life. This is everything that came before I had my daughter. Some of the titles in this body of work are direct messages being a new mother and an artist at the same time. Each piece in Start Pretending is open to a new revision and a new life in another form. Time and distance are an important part of that process.

Time and distance is also what allows Ramo to pretend one thing is another, which the quote from Island of the Blue Dolphins, a very important book for me, so beautifully illustrates. Sometimes, process-based art creates too much distance between the artist and the viewer. I try to close that gap by displaying my work with vulnerability, and, I hope, a little humor.