TEXTS:
Statement
Bio
The Purple Journal, Fall 2005
The Purple Journal, Spring 2006
The Purple Journal, Summer 2006
On New Orleans' Contemporary Public Art
Austin Chronicle
AuthorViews video interview
Louisiana NPR Essay "Love/Burn" (read by Andy Young)
New Orleans Artist Creates Tribute To Katrina Victims

My identity has been defined by a life-long experience of exile. As the daughter of a Russian mother and Cherokee/Irish father, both at odds and in denial of each other’s heritage, my self-definition is a process of fluidity, tension, and mystery. Surviving an adolescence of violence and homelessness, my saving grace was my ability to transmutate abjectness into power, coupled with a frank awareness of the impermanence of all things. This is the main tenet of my creative work.

Having found New Orleans a suitably fluid environment to call home (an ironic tension not lost on me), I have lived here for 14 years. Photography, painting, drawing, sculpture, as well as creative and critical writing inform my work in process-oriented installations. Out of a frustration with the limitations of formal art-making procedures and a compulsion to make work that will address issues –vs- describe them, my current work includes organizing community-based, site-specific work in areas recovering from disaster with my project “Art In Action”. In this way I consistently address issues of impermanence, exile, and individual/collective responsibility while also promoting the creative process as a valid method for recovering from trauma and cultivating an intimate, vital connection to the world.