Container 1998, 21"x28"

Container-detail

Fence 1998, 21"x28"

Fence-detail

Artist Statement

This series, Un-Natural Boundaries, extends themes from earlier work by incorporating images of natural objects that have been manipulated into architectural forms. These act as a counterpoint to highly finished objects and suggest a relationship between cultural and natural boundaries.

Imagery includes scanned sticks and picture frames arranged into spatially ambiguous surfaces. Picture frames traditionally delineate, or border one area of activity from another and suggest cultural significance. Viewers are invited to question their initial preconceptions concerning relative value.

These works draw from diverse sources of personal experience, observation, and history, art and otherwise. They attempt to connect disparate aspects of culture and human behavior. A middle class, suburban, background has led me to a keen awareness of the cultural significance of boundaries. Boundaries express ownership and control. They create hierarchies and are exclusive. Boundaries may be viewed simultaneously as both positive and negative forces preventing society from falling into anarchy or achieving utopia. The consequence of this is the existence of an inherent dynamic tension in society: a constant state of flux.

Process and Materials

Natural objects are collected, scanned and incorporated with images from mass media sources that have been digitized, combined, contained, and manipulated. This process, while utilizing technology, embodies the same aesthetic and empirical decision making that is applied to painting or drawing with traditional media. The"natural" structures do not exist in the real world but are constructed in the computer. The images are digitally printed on archival paper in edititons of 20.