My artist statement

Artist Statement:
I started making these shrines sometime in 2002 with my art teacher and friend Marki. The first shrines were from tangerine boxes and things lying around the house. I liked using things that had very little sentimental attachment. I felt like I was creating something without any rules or responsibilities. The freedom and surprise I felt with each shrine I made seemed to bring to light aspects of my life and myself that I had forgotten or been unaware of. Memories, images, and feelings from my childhood returned as I worked on new shrines. Once I got started I really couldn't stop.I grew up in a big Catholic family in Detroit. I never felt especially religious but I did associate my church with my home, my neighborhood, my family, and my developing female identity. Home, neighborhood, and family were at the core of how I saw and still see myself as a woman. I realize how people, especially girls and women, from my early childhood influenced me, inspiring, shaping, and populating my art.One of the strongest pleasures of my childhood was the time I spent wandering around the alleys of my neighborhood, doing what we called alley picking. I loved finding discarded things and bringing them home to a new life. I wasn't just collecting stuff. I came to feel a kind of obligation to them. It was hard to throw them away. In my shrines I use mostly things I've found in an alley, on the street, in my own trash, or at a thrift shop. Many pieces in this show are made from remnants of a room-remodeling project in my home. I like to think that all broken things can have a new life if given a chance. I am always so happy when something, the uglier the better, that I've been looking at in my box of stuff for years finally finds its way into just the right place in a piece. In these pieces, I am trying to reclaim a spirit of the Divine that emanates from the ordinary but transcends the everydayness of the objects I use. I don't believe my art has more of the Divine than other earthly objects, but I feel something spiritual awakened and at work when I am creating. When I recognize the piece I've worked on is complete, I am so grateful to have found this connection to God in my life.Artist Bio:I am a self-taught artist and physical therapist. Although I took the first unconscious steps in my creative life when I became a childhood ally picker, it wasn't until about six years ago that I started making art out of things that other people would consider junk. Although having shows of my work has never been my goal, I have presented my work in Chapel Hill, in Lawrence, Kansas, and in Richmond, Virginia.