What neighborhood do you live in? Can you tell us about it?
My family and I live in Lakeview.  We love it!  It is close to public transportation, the lake, parks, etc.  Lakeview has an interesting and multigenerational mix of LGBTQ, Cubs Fans, DePaul students and families. We have lived in Lakeview for 11 years.  My kids who are twins and in 6th grade go to the neighborhood CPS school. The relationship between the community and the school is really special and reciprocal, meaning they completely support one another.   The school is one of the few elementary schools to keep Fine Arts in their core curriculum. We walk to school everyday, no matter the weather – and this adds to the way we connect to our neighborhood.

Does your art reflect your neighborhood or does your neighborhood otherwise inspire you?
In a very general way, living near excellent art institutions, art galleries, art schools, exhibition spaces and being able to share this city with artists who are at every level of their career- is vital to my practice; I feel like I can partake in an ongoing and vibrant conversation.  I walk to my studio every day and the surface, textures and colors also effect and inform my paintings.  My paintings are made with layers of colors on canvas that I tear after painting. There is destruction and rebirth embedded in this work.  I like seeing the layers, like a slice of geological sediment.  The city shows layers- and in Chicago where neighborhoods have long and specific identities, these layers vary and intersect. I like the torn line of the canvas.  It produces the cracks and stresses of age.  There’s an aura in the cracks, and the lines and the torn bits.

When did you start creating?
I just never stopped

Where do you work in the city—where is your studio, if applicable? 
My STUDIO!  My studio is a multifunctional storefront space.  It’s a 35 minute walk from where I live, the neighborhood is called Bricktown.  I share the space with 2 artists, my husband who is a business consultant and engineer, and a small exhibition space, called Material. We bought the storefront and moved in last May.  I am very interested in artists finding ways to have ownership in the city, to keep the city diverse and interesting and to find ways to contribute and avoid the cycle of gentrification.  I love being in a storefront. I love that we own it and it’s not vacant.

How does the city impact you personally and artistically?
Space is a big constraint in the city – and during different points in my life and career, I have had to abandon certain ways of making, for example I used to make large ceramic sculptures… which understandably became very burdensome. So, the city has it’s way of forcing you to make practical and logistical decisions like that.  I like this element of problem solving.

The challenge to make a living as an artist and balance a job with a studio practice is very real. Chicago, however, is a very livable city. It is possible to make it work, and there are a lot of artists and creative people that are great examples.  People who have found a way!  Chicago offers so many surprising and exciting ways to have an artistic life.  I would love to see more artists, more exhibition spaces, more studios, more writers, more music, more theatre, more dance, etc. 

How would you describe your subject matter and your aesthetic?
My subject matter is definitely embedded in Colorfield painting, geometric abstraction and the language associated with Modernism; but my work just begins within that history.  The paintings are really hybrids.  They are very connected to materiality and process.  The material has a voice in the work and because of that presence can have a sculptural quality.   I borrow from fiber and textile strategies as well as process and conceptual art. 

Can you describe your artistic practice?
I find great joy in painting, both as an object and a verb.  I enjoy the material of painting and the various ways it can be manipulated both as a sculptural object and as a surface.  I am interested in the historical and conceptual constraints of Painting, as well as the material limits.

I began deconstructing the materials of Painting, and thinking about these words: Paint, Support, Frame; and the literal meaning associated with each.  How can the role of canvas shift from support to subject? Typically the canvas is stretched taut over the frame. The canvas, or support, exists to hold the pigment, to support the gesture, the artist, and the ego.  The canvas is, after all, both a support of the painted gesture and a fabric.  Within these constraints the canvas holds great potential:  it can be the line, it can be the form, it can call upon feminine histories of craft and making.  It can be high fashion.  It can be primitive.  It can be soft.  It can be layered and destructive and rewoven into an object and idea: both old and new.

The Paintings I make are very sculptural and I often use large amounts of painted canvas.  I like the epic-ness of stretching a canvas along a wall and the physical-ness of applying layers of paint.

Who or what inspires or influences you today?

So many things….Walking around Chicago and looking at the architecture, the surfaces, the textures…Other artists both past and present. Ceramics:  I spent many years working with ceramics, and made large coil built sculptural forms.  The transformation that happens in the kiln is magical, the science of it and the surface fetish was addictive. Punk rock: Past the nostalgia that this music represents for me, I return to it for psychic energy and confidence and non-judgement. I love the feeling and idea of destruction embedded in creation. Punk is also incredibly inclusive.

Music of all genres is an important inspiration and experimental jazz has also become an important component in my creative life.  My husband is an avid jazz fan, and he introduces all kinds of new sounds to me through playlists, etc.  For me, the best jazz has a reverence for form in that way that it can continually and all at once reference it, dismantle it, and reconfigure it.  I also like experimental music that plays with the materiality of sound as it relates to the instrument that is emitting the sound.  It can be unexpected and both cerebral and visceral. 

I am also very inspired when I engage with nature in a very specific way: usually when sailing, skiing, body surfing, and boogie boarding.  I enjoy being propelled through space, quietly and with minimal effort.  There is a sweet spot in a line, catching a wave, finding the wind, controlling a downhill turn- all of these things give me visual, visceral and cerebral inspiration.

When creating, do you create in silence or do you have music to motivate you? If so, what do you like to listen to?
I listen to nothing, music, podcasts, news, books, my sister or friends talking in my ear…. Going to the studio and making is just a fact of my life.   Sometimes I use music to shift my mood.  If I am doing something repetitive in the work, I can listen to podcasts or books.  Sometimes I need silence to think something through. I use my headphones all the time.  Music is a big part of my life.

What does creating do for you personally?
It is the thing that connects me to the world, to being human.  It is a privilege.