Attentive Blooms, Future Transformations. Solo Exhibition at Bryant Street Gallery.

 "Thinking of these symbolic connections between nature, the body, and climate change I draw partial six-fold symmetries. Sharp angles soften and wiggle, cell-like shapes minnow along as branches and flowers become a part of the flotsam disconnected from the earth. Drawn line by line the figurative snow crystals become interlaced with each other and their environment, jumbling towards their future transformations. My drawing process is intuitive and organic. For this reason, I include drips and spills, and run with flaws and mistakes by collaging pieces of drawings together as a way of dealing with the ever-changing uncertainties of life."

Check out the Palo Alto Weekly for an interview and review of the show.

Here’s a digital catalog too!

The show was up from June 4th- July 19th 2024.

In the Studio

Exhibit: INTRODUCTIONS

I’m happy to announce that I’ve been represented by Bryant Street Gallery in Palo Alto, CA. I’m included in their first show of the new year, INTRODUCTIONS. A group show of new artists to the gallery.

Nested Cloud. Ink, colored pencil and graphite on paper. 44 x 39 inches. 2021.

Exhibit News

I’m happy to share that I have two shows:

PATTERNS OF POWER at Empty Set Gallery, Bronx, NY. On view from January 22nd- March 19th. (Check out Empty Set Gallery’s website for a video walk through of the show!)

COOL AND COLLECTED ‘22 at Kenise Barnes Fine Art Gallery, Kent, CT. On view until March 13th.

“Storm Break” at Empty Set Gallery, PATTERNS OF POWER

“Snow Flora, Pink Branches” at Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Cool and Collected ‘22

Exhibit

I’m excited to share that I’m a part of WOArtblog’s Online Exhibition.

Featuring Artists from across the United States using the various natural patterns of trees, waves, stripes, symmetries, spirals and fractals as inspiration in their work.

October 1-31, 2021

www.woartblog.com

Blossom Fire, ink, colored pencil, and graphite on paper. 11 1/8 x 14 in. 2021.

Underwater Pink Branches. Ink, colored pencil and graphite on paper. 11 x 14 1/8 in. 2021.

Ice Flora. Ink, colored pencil and graphite on paper. 10 7/8 x 14 in. 2021.

January. Ink, colored pencil and graphite on paper. 27.5 x 37 in. 2021.

New Work: "Nested Cloud"

I’ve been missing the rain since I’ve moved from NJ’s summer thunderstorms to CA drought…

Nested Cloud. Ink, colored pencil and graphite on paper. 44 x 39 inches.

Detail- Nested Cloud. Ink, colored pencil and graphite on paper. 44 x 39 inches.

Detail- Nested Cloud. Ink, colored pencil and graphite on paper. 44 x 39 inches.

Sketchbook Look

I posted a shorter clip of my sketchbook on Insta, but I decided to post the whole thing here. I always obsessively love watching artists flip through their sketchbooks they generously post.

I really enjoyed working in this sketchbook I started in November. Since college, I've had a hesitant relationship with sketchbooks. I only worked in tiny sketchbooks and mostly wrote things down in them that I had read, and only sketching things that, maybe, I would elaborate on later. But since March of 2020 I've had a more or less attitude of, "You like drawing don't you! Well, get after it! Draw all the rando things!" Which has translated into a fun explosion of drawing (of mostly branches, hexagons and flames...). I'm caulking it up to the pandemic. Stakes are high, no-one's looking over your shoulder, be FREE. I've started a new slightly bigger sketchbook, and bought 12 more so I'm ready for flipping anything.

Work in Progress

New Drawing

Ice Over Blue (with small controlled burn). Ink, colored pencil and graphite on paper. 26 1/2 x 35 3/4 inches. 2021.

Pollen and Snow Flora

Pollen. 11 x 14 inches, ink, colored pencil and graphite on paper. 2020.

Snow Flora. 11 x 14 inches. Ink, colored pencil and graphite on paper. 2020.

These two drawings were made in the beginning of 2020 and the start of ideas that I would focus on for the year. My mother-in-law bought both of them, “Snow Flora” being sent to Norway to her soon to be daughter-in-law, and “Pollen” for herself.

Making these drawings felt kind of dreamy. Drawing with lines felt very straightforward, I had just departed from making work with dots and dotted-lines for the past 10 years. Interestingly, instead of focusing on being extra coordinated with my hand and visualizing where each dot would go, lines freed up the mental effort and I’m able to drift around. I make more “mistakes” this way (smudging and spilling ink mostly), but this way feels so damn cheerful. So much for intensely focused mental effort.

Pink Earth Tonguled, 2017

Pink Earth Tonguled, 10 x 10 inches, ink, colored pencil and graphite on paper. 2017.

This drawing was recently sold by Kenise Barnes Fine Art Gallery.

I remember enjoying how the pink parts turned out, relating to the green dotted-lines (I always started in the center of the page with drawings like these) set the symmetrical-stage— unfolding how the drawing would proceed.

On the Desk

A work in progress.

News

I have a show of my most recent works through the Drawing Rooms’ Art Program at Dvora Art House in Jersey City. From Sept. 2020- March 2021. Open for viewing by appointment, write to me to schedule or to learn more details.

The artist with “Heavy Descent”.

Drawing Notes: Dots & Lines

Drawing Notes: Dots & Lines

Lines, wiggle and cruise, surge and loop. They can do anything. In between slow and fast, the middle gear says the most.

Since January I’ve been focusing on making my work with lines. I have been drawing with dots for almost 10 years, since graduating with my BFA. I decided to mix up how I draw for a couple reasons, but mostly due to a wrist injury that’s left me with some sensitive scar tissue. For now, at least, I’ll think with lines.

Dots and dashes are interesting to me to say the least, they seem to perpetually be forming, marching, expanding, and at the same time, about to vanish. An inauspicious experiment got me started drawing with dots during my BFA. I decided to make a rubbing of a cinder block with graphite. Burnishing it with a sheet of paper, the raised granular bumps of the cinder block left behind these organic looking dots and dashes. Unexpected of an industrial material, but beautiful. I sprang excitedly into action from there, exploring with my own hand-drawn dots and dashes. So far, my work has grown and changed from thinking about what drawing is to letting the work be influenced by patterns in nature, water, ecology, and wrestling with colored pencil and graphite to make it work together.

Detail of “Snow Flora, Falling”.

I have to say it’s been odd, working in one way, almost exclusively, for a long time and shifting to another has been difficult and interesting. It’s been like coming out of a deprivation chamber, or riding a bike when you’ve been walking for miles. I find that lines seem to keep pace with me. Dots are more fretful and mostly concerned with getting from A to B without misfire. Not to say that was my entire experience with them, but that was a decent portion of it. With dots I also felt I had to imagine what was going to happen next far ahead of time. Lines can be limp as a noodle or dancing lyrically, easily, changing and vetting the page as I go along. It’s so wild and new to me right now.

I like maps, I like getting lost in them. I had this assumption that where dots obscure or point in many directions, lines would give it all up, like a bumpy rocky hiking trail using a printed map vs. cruising on a major highway using GPS. This is kind of true and kind of not. I find that my mind turns anyway, gets lost, and more quickly with lines. And maybe where I thought defection was interesting (possibly brought out by art school critiques in self-defense) showing the major routes feels necessary.

Artist Talk

Recently, I was invited to contribute to Superstition Review’s podcast, which I was pleased to be featured on! I read, only slightly nervously, about my work. I talked about the starting point behind the drawing series based on snow crystals, what I read, and my thinking process.

Superstition Review podcast