I am the daughter of proud Sicilian immigrants. As such, very specific cultural and religious icons, and traditional Italian superstitions colored my daily existence. In our home, one can find prayer cards of saints and angels, small plastic statues of famous Italian religious monuments, Renaissance sculptures (my first exposure to art) and typical Sicilian icons (carts with horses, puppets, and short, dark-haired men {looking remarkably like my uncles} pulling donkeys). All of these elements, although very different in form, meaning, and function, were highly revered and comfortably juxtaposed against patterned wallpaper, golden fixtures, crocheted doilies, and brocaded fabrics. The central touchstone of my studio practice is the understanding that I am a traditionally educated artist, working primarily with elements of drawing and printmaking. For me, it is important to maintain the unvarnished authenticity of the processes (pen to paper, ink to block). Simply put, I thrive on the experience of making with my hands. Within these traditional media, I still find a heterogeneous world in which to balance form and content. I have catalyzed the structure of my work into compositional methods that allow me to give shape to the implications of my experiences, while attempting to recast them into broader, cultural, religious, artistic, political, and historical terms.

All of my work, from the time I began to study art, is linked to some representation of the human body. My preoccupations with the body, internal and external, are connected to the visual and spoken religious and cultural motifs that were central to my upbringing. In describing the conceptual foundations of my work, I would say all of my experiences have seeped into my creative mind, providing for a magnificent, and even harsh landscape of narratives. I have tried to maintain a wide orbit within my sustained commitment to traditional practices. This has allowed me to use my intellectual curiosity to draw connections between seemingly disparate, fragmented elements, to engage the viewer, and myself, in a sort of conceptual play. In my art I spontaneously fuse and reshape my formative memories and intellectual/political meanderings. I synthesize pieces and parts to expose a visual inventory in which life and art are intertwined.

I am currently working on several new pieces that engage a different type of narrative configuration. In some of my new prints and drawings, for example, I am unraveling my highly embellished, forceful images in favor of a more poetic fragmentation. I am changing the connection from a graphic present, experience to a subtle, subconscious one. I am also working on an installation of, what will be over 500, clear resin cast branches (a reference to the print Branch Eater). My current ideas tend towards the intersection of print and installation, but not as a marriage of the two, more so as a way to draw attention to multiple, not as an edition but more as a repetitive process. I have also been working on a series of digital photographs loosely titled Collectors Items that chronicle the constellations of my parents’ illogical knick-knack narratives.

I see myself as a practicing artist/educator who is dedicated to the vast geography of the printmaking universe, its various possibilities, histories and network of people.