Artist’s Statement

All my life, great art has affected me pro­foundly by evok­ing spon­ta­neous uncon­trol­lable sob­bing. As a child and young adult, I was puz­zled and embar­rassed by these reac­tions. For­tu­nately, with age, expe­ri­ence and self-introspection, I’ve real­ized that these highly sen­si­tive vis­ceral reac­tions allow an oppor­tu­nity for under­stand­ing of my “self” and con­nec­tion with the “other” as well as a pro­cliv­ity to make art. It is a gift.

At the begin­ning of my prac­tice, as an under­grad­u­ate, I explored paint as the medium for cre­at­ing por­traits of myself and other peo­ple. I quickly real­ized that the images revealed my sub­con­scious and pos­si­bly wiser under­stand­ing of oth­ers and myself. By study­ing phi­los­o­phy, my research and writ­ing devel­oped. I defined art broadly to include dif­fer­ent aes­thet­ics that include activism and living.

My philo­soph­i­cal work began with Ancient Greek con­cep­tions of art par­tic­u­larly from the Poet­ics. Aris­to­tle defines empa­thy as the pin­na­cle of suc­cess­ful sto­ry­telling and the high­est form of art. The great­est achieve­ment for the writer is to stim­u­late the audi­ence into not only feel­ing sim­i­larly and agree­ing with the char­ac­ters’ actions but to get the audi­ence to feel that they too would make the same deci­sion if given the same cir­cum­stances. This idea cuts across all forms of art.

The tools for cre­at­ing art are evolv­ing rapidly, a tar­get mov­ing at greater and greater speed. Today, my prac­tice has evolved in con­junc­tion with the progress of tech­nol­ogy lead­ing to cre­at­ing expe­ri­ences for audience/participant that inter­sect with the nar­ra­tive, sound and the visual, such as radio broad­casts, films and net based social net­work­ing. The tools of these new media have even greater poten­tial than ever before to heighten an artis­tic expe­ri­ence.
Art can be sen­su­ally immer­sive, inter­ac­tive and com­pletely unique every time.
Sev­enty years ago, Wal­ter Ben­jamin implored us to con­sider the eth­i­cal use of these new tech­nolo­gies in his great essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Art’s Reproducibility.”

The inten­tion of the art is embed­ded and must be trans­par­ent for the viewer to see. The choice and use of media has the poten­tial to manip­u­late and change the world for bet­ter or worse. I take these words with grave responsibility.

Works Include:

Balkan Song
is a video, museum instal­la­tion and per­for­mance con­cerned with Sev­dah and forced marraiges

Two Vil­lages, One Heart
is a 60 minute doc­u­men­tary about the sim­i­lar­i­ties between teh vil­lages of Ben Lomond and Dju­nis Serbia.

Cathex­iSpin
was an per­for­mance instal­la­tion with the UCSC mecha­tron­ics group project “Friends of Ficus” at 01 in San Jose in 2008 con­cerned wtih human bio-power.

Here­After­Here
was a the­atri­cal mulit-media per­for­mance peice by Tandy Beal and Company.

The Spear­Shaker
is a screen­play con­cerned wtih Edward De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.

The Play­group
is a novel about the sexy hippy mamas in the Santa Cruz Mountains.