"It is quite rare to find a woman who hasn’t had her self-image influenced by popular media at some point in her life. The expectations of Western beauty standards and the materialistic requirements of society teach us to constantly doubt ourselves, pick apart our bodies, and judge the most superficial aspects of our fellow women. As a teenager, I drank in the images from popular women’s beauty and fashion magazines, developing a deep sense of inadequacy, physically and sexually, that I still work to overcome as an adult. These images burrow deep into our psyches, and it requires conscious transformation to undo their fallacies.
As an artist, I challenge the stories and expectations in women’s fashion and beauty magazines by dissecting the images from their glossy pages. I take collaged pieces of women from those magazines and reassemble them with images from the natural world -- flowers and astronomy representing inherent power. I celebrate women; I explore our struggles, exposing my own emotional turmoil, weaving in personal histories, mythology, and acknowledging the influence of religious ideology on my life. I’ve come to the conclusion that woman is god. By combining the sacred and the profane, I create new realities that contradict the unrealistic expectations presented by popular media, and raise women up to be worshiped as goddesses, prayed to as saints, and venerated as the fearless leaders they are.
Mixed-media gives me freedom to explore and play in my work. My pieces start with collage elements, on top of which I paint and draw. Besides magazines, I use my own photographs, not only of botanicals, but of the strong women in my life, and self-portraits as a means of self-reflection. I often incorporate embroidery into my works, a skill thought of as a traditional “woman’s pastime”, which I learned from my grandma. An element of tactility and familiarity is implied by the delicate thread, but the text I choose to embroider is often contrary to the nostalgic comfort of fanciful home goods, which creates tension in my work. It is in those uncomfortable places of tension and conflict that important questions get asked."
Bio
"I grew up in the woods of Southern Oregon, which is why images of nature are so prevalent in my work. I started exhibiting my work in high school, going on to study art at Lewis & Clark College, abroad in Angers, France, and finally at Southern Oregon University, where I earned my BA in Art in 2006. After several years in Oakland, CA, I returned to Portland in 2017. As a constant creator, I also print cyanotype photographs on fabric, which I sew into functional handbags, write poetry, and manage MEOW BITCHES, a platform for radical self-love and living unapologetically, represented through art, fashion, music, and print."