The Deconstructionist

When I was five years old, I realized a world of wonder and infinite curiosity.  I lived close to the land in Northern California with my activist-hippie-mom and brother.  Life was about sunshine, dirt, and the smell of goats.  Though my father was out of the picture, I was told both he and my grandmother were artists.  I didn’t know what an artist was, but all of the strange things I did and thought seemed to be linked to this notion of making things, to which my mother simply surrendered to as my inherent gifts.

One of the things I began doing right away was deconstruction.  In a tangible way, it was boxes of any kind turned into containers of a different form, a turntable dismantled and made to perform as a radio, while I ran my fingers over the solder spots, and heard things through the speaker.  In other ways, it was thinking beyond the boundaries.  For me, it was soothing to think of the myriad ways in which to look at the world around me.  I could see small and imagine big.  I was sensitive and aware. 

I am still this child and I am still a deconstructionist.  I love to see the possibilities of things, especially things considered no longer useful.  It’s wise, I believe, to know when things are no longer useful and are ready to evolve into something new.  Both in ourselves and in the material world, for they reflect one another.  I once did a three-person show, at The Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sacramento, on reconstructed grocery bags.  They became like Japanese scrolls complete with tassels embellished with expressive pastel people contorted onto the skin of the bags.  I painted in acrylic on discarded pull-down window shades.  The figures were asked to exist the world of the picture window, too tall, or stuck in a shallow space with words surrounding them.  They were bright, refreshing, and honest. 

Now, it is T-shirts from boxes of free items on street corners turned into skirts and pants with messages of humor and social change. And there are large-scale drawings on thick, fibrous, paper of people transformed into icons and melding into images of connectedness, love, and systemic social change.  The paper is like skin, the essence of the trees upon which they are feeding.  There is a contagious boldness to the work, complete with gold and copper or fake money to lure the “eye of the crow” and to challenge the viewer to be her truest self.  The art is coming from a spiritual place.  It is asking us to consider another way of seeing things.  We are being asked to open to the idea of falling in love with humanity and to manifest beauty through our brave visions of a new world in America.  

Learn more:  Open To Love: A Facebook Community
                     Deconstruction:  I Just Found This (2 Minute Youtube)