Category: Craft and Objects

Etchings in jewelers brass. Setting in sterling silver. Chain in alternating brass and sterling silver links.

Series of jewelry pieces based on etched patterns of Golgi stained neurons. Etchings in nickel-silver. Settings, findings and chains in sterling silver.

Batik of Picasso’s “Guernica”, 2015.

Entirely wax-resist batik process on cotton.

Inspired by the teratological specimens in the Mutter Museum, I sculpted, molded and cast three late term fetuses displaying major malformities. The emerald one, whom I named Mordechai, displays phocomelia. The sapphire one, whom I named Shiloh in honor of Shiloh Pepin (the mermaid girl), displays sirenomelia. The ruby one, whom I named Isabel, displays cyclopia.

The three are designed to be objects of horror and beauty. I don’t have the gut reaction of most to the display of teratological specimens, and in fact find them quite fascinating and beautiful in their own right. For what they represent: development gone awry, and for what they are: little monsters. I wanted to capture my own feeling of awe and beauty by translating the experience into art, and presenting the specimens not as horrific things, but as unique and beautiful as jewels. I named them to give them identity, and I colored them to give them associated value beyond their media.

Ideally, I display them suspended in appropriately sized mason jars with each other.

Tie-dye, wax resist, fabric pen illustration.

Set of Drawers, built to the length of my torso. The height of each drawer corresponds to segments of the spine, Cervical, Thoracic, Lumbar and Sacral. Custom cast bronze drawer pulls adorn the front of each drawer with an example of a vertebra from that region of the spine, flanked by a bifurcated example of an organ from that region of the body (Brain, Lungs, Intestines and Genitals). Red oak with the back edge kept raw.

Tie-dye, wax resist, fabric pen illustration.

Fiber installation. Using traditional shibori dye techniques on starched fabric, arranged as to emphasize the dimensional nature of the shibori process.

Silver and custom plastic pieces.