Art Historian

Ceramic Sculptor

Public Artist

Teacher

Current Work

Always interdisciplinary, my Research, Studio and Teaching interests bridge Modern and Contemporary Art and consider the ways the work of our own time informs understanding of art of past eras. I focus particularly on natural history and natural science and their visual representation, contemporary theory, specifically issues of taxonomy and power as they relate to science, knowledge, and colonization, and psychoanalytic theory in its understanding of the past and present as woven together. My career merges Art Historical Research, Studio Art practice, and Teaching in equal measures, a praxis which enhances my work in each field.

Research Current writing projects include a book-length work on Martin Johnson Heade's Hummingbird Paintings, and articles on Alphabet Books of Ornithology and the role of birds in African American art, each of which unravel the repetitive, playful, and nonsensical ways that we classify knowledge. In my writing, I explore the possibilities of poetry and poetics, the connections between American, British, and French art, and Animal Representation and its potential to reveal meaning in representations of and explorations of the human.

Teaching Diverse interests and valuable experience have given me broad-ranging teaching expertise. I am equally at home teaching in the studio and classroom, and see the operations of the studio and classroom as a seamless whole. In both realms I draw on popular culture, literature, critical theory and creative practice to inform and inspire discussion, and attend carefully to the differences in individuals and backgrounds to engage all students. At the North Carolina School of the Arts, I teach the survey of Art History from Prehistory to Contemporary, as well as Modern Art, Contemporary Art, Animal Representation, American and African American Art. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill I taught Advanced and Intermediate Ceramic Sculpture, Modern Art, and assistant taught The History of Film.

Sculpture In the studio, my explorations overlap many areas of my written work: my current project, "All Work and No Play" sets ceramic actors into playground spaces, investigating connections between the natural world, poetry, narrative, and play. I work to establish a vibration between the familiar and the unexpected (an uncanny space), the nostalgic and the uncomfortable, and to combine objects, formal possibilities, and suggested environments in ways that allow the viewer to reflect on past experiences anew.

Images, Top to Bottom: Martin Johnson Heade, Blue Morpho Butterfly, 1863; Joseph Cornell, Tilly Losch, 1935, Betsy Towns, Saddleback Caterpillar, 2007.