How did you start making art?
I’ve made art in various forms for decades, but the art that I’ve been making over the last few years had an unusual start: with a voice in my head. I had been writing and revising a series of ghost stories and was holed up at home during the early days of the pandemic knee-deep in that work. One day, bent over the computer, I heard a voice clear as a bell in my head say, “This isn’t a short story, it’s a collage.” It was like my intuition suddenly had enough, or the world had gotten quiet enough for me to listen to it. I started making collages that day and haven’t stopped.
When did you realize creating art would be a significant part of your life?
I’ve always known but it has been a long road bringing art to the center of my days. My upbringing was largely devoid of artistic encouragement, with the sole exception of my Catholic elementary school art teacher, who always praised me for coloring within the lines. A life centered around art requires a certain amount of risk-taking that intimidated me because of my conditioning. Plus I had no examples of how to do it, and didn’t know how to seek those examples out. In my early twenties I was on a path to become a ladder-climbing academic and had something of a crisis—I knew, without being able to articulate it, that I had to quit my PhD program and figure myself out. One of the first things I did after leaving was enroll in an art class.
Tell us about your favorite medium to work in and why.
Paper. I love how responsive it is, how it ranges from sturdy to delicate, opaque to transparent, how it transforms through glue and ink and folding and layering. How it captures time in its marks from the sun and smells from its storage. How it sounds. Because it has tooth. Because it has memory. It is, to me, alive.
How do you start a new work?
By being haunted by a question I have about an image I’ve seen or something I’ve read, or a combination of both. The source might be something I’ve encountered in my own stash or from things I’ve encountered outside the studio. It’s non-negotiable: I have to work through this thing that’s nagging me. It might be how two colors look together, or the words chosen to describe a photograph in a book. I rarely have a clear idea of how to materially process the tension; usually I experiment with a bunch of possibilities, get messy, and hit several dead ends before I determine the constraints that will allow the work to be what it needs to be.
Tell us about three artists that have been influential for you.
Louise Bourgeois. Her story, her use of personal history, her vision to take up space with massive spiders. Nothing is too weird or too taboo for her, she goes straight to the bone. I feel so lucky to have seen many of her installations – and I do mean lucky. I stumbled into one not knowing who she was or what to expect and felt totally changed afterwards.
Henri Matisse. Those paper collages never get old. They are so full of life, and a beautiful example of what simple materials can do.
Anne Carson. Her novel in verse Autobiography of Red rearranged my thinking of what books and storytelling can look and feel like. There is so much presence, so many layers, in everything she makes.
How has your style and practice changed over time?
I’m not sure I have a definable style. I focus on the practice, which I greet with sincere discipline but also extreme playfulness. And gratitude. Some gestures and methods are constant—I swear by a glue recipe and a lot of other habits I learned from years of bookbinding, and really enjoy that kind of studio prep and production. But I am also constantly folding in new approaches, a bit of a magpie.
Describe your dream project.
It involves getting lost in libraries and archives, lots of accidental discoveries, and ghostly encounters.
Why is art important?
How can it not be important?
What book do you think everyone should read? Why?
The book I just finished reading, Sylvia Townsend Warner’s feminist novel, Lolly Willowes, which was published in 1926 and makes the claim that all middle-aged women are or should be witches.
What is the best advice you have received in your career?
There is no such thing as being late to the party. You are the party.