My art is a visual way of questioning our relationship with animals. The animals in my sculptures become inverted anatomies showing their interior organ structures painted and embroidered on the body’s surface or through translucent skin.  The realistic animal, with its unblinking stare focused on the viewer, is juxtaposed with a fantastic interior, forcing us to reflect on and consider our relationship with animals and the cultural baggage we bring to them. The animal is no longer an odalisque for us to admire but a full participant in the conversation about our fractious relationship with them.

 

My ideas about our relationship with animals developed while working in veterinary clinics and at the Bronx Zoo’s Exhibit Department. Both places put the range of people’s attitudes towards animals on full display. At veterinarians, I would routinely see animals that suffered from abuse, neglect or too much love. The zoo especially was full of contradictions; the devotion of the staff to care for animals, who in artificial and sometimes inadequate environments, suffered despite the best of intentions. Although these animals didn’t volunteer to be ambassadors for their species, they do inspire people to think about and act on conservation, animal rights and climate change.

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These experiences and my interest in evolution, biology and cosmology are embroidered into my work. The sculptures become their own universe, completely contained within themselves, challenging the viewer.

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