I am an interdisciplinary performer, conceptual artist, and scholar.  For me, both art and life are devotional practices dedicated to the unfolding of inner truths. I use art making as investigation: I am deeply curious about the worlds around and within me, and I craft my work from stories and ideas that are all, in some way, harvested from my own intimate experiences of living and being —from the banal to the fantastic. My curiosity drives me to explore forms, and to push at or traverse boundaries.  Over the years, this has led me to work with dance, storytelling, writing, photography, sound composition, theater, and installation art. Crossing between these disciplines has allowed me to deepen the artistic weave of my work. 

 

   My art/life practice has foundations in second-wave feminist thinking, and much of my work has emerged from explorations of my identities as a woman, as a mother, and as a maverick. I believe in art's ability and responsibility to name the un-named: to perceive and to translate experiences, ideas, and knowledge that may be taboo, secret, or deeply rooted in our subconscious beings. For this reason, both in my life and in my work I embrace and seek out vulnerability.

 

   Though trained technically as a dancer and a performer, I tend to eschew virtuosity, favoring instead forms of expression arising from states of inner sensitivity.  To access this creative voice, I spend a lot of time alone in the studio or on the page, using improvisation to converse with my own body in time and space; dancing back and forth between the known and the unknown.  In creating work, I playfully juxtapose ideas, tempos, emotions, and opinions, leaving room for multiple layers of meaning and interpretation.  I embrace contradiction in narrative and character, and often choose to embody male characters in order to explore the dynamics of gender construction, power, and voice.

 

   In my work, I attempt to take down the walls that separate “Art” from art and art from life. I seek new ways to integrate art into our daily lives and to make it more relevant to the world.  As a teacher and a performer, I am committed to bringing dance, theater, and art into non-traditional public spaces in order to engage with more diverse communities.  I believe that creativity is our human inheritance, and that the critical awakening of each of us to our inner creative lives can inspire us toward a more holistic relationship with ourselves and with our planet.

 

 

 

Artist's Statement

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