Projects: Mapping the Walk and other projects
Mapping the Walk is an archive of 50 original graphite and gouache drawings on mulberry paper drawn from 2011 to 2020. Each of the drawings is a composite image based on observations and drawings by the artist of flora growing along a single ancient footpath on the Cycladic Island of Kea, Greece. The footpath once stretched to the north tip of the island, however, in recent years paved roadways have destroyed all but the small section leading from the village of Ioulis, passing the ancient Lion of Kea, and ending at the paved road just beyond the Benjamin Spring. The composite drawings represent walks taken each month along the remaining footpath, as a way to honor and document the path itself via its plants; at once the most consistent feature of the path but at the same time the most ephemeral and changing. 36 of the drawings done from 2011 - 2016 are in the collection of the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies, Athens , Greece. The archive of drawings can be seen on request at the library ( AF-A. 42,CI, Q)
Oasis Siwa/Korydallos Dialogue
I began this project by studying the stylized floral motifs of a richly embroidered Cretan textile in the Benaki collection. I tracked down the actual plant sources depicted and made realistic prints on cloth of the plants. I sent these prints to women in Oasis Siwa in the Great Sand Sea of western Egypt, inviting them to embroider their own original designs over my prints. Working together in their homes, not far from the temple where Alexander the Great was crowned Sun King, they embelished my simple prints with imaginative, stylized floral motifs in sequins, beads and thread. I then transposed these embroderies into prints on fabric and sent them to women inmates of Korydallos Prison Athens Greece. Using appliqué and embroidery to depict, stylized birds, animals and people, they brought the collaborative project back full circle to the imagery and spirit of the original Cretan embroidery. These works, wrought by numerous hands in a global exchange, merge past and present in a shared language of fabric and ornamentation.