My work deals with abstracting text into an object/image. I start with text that interest me and then make notes about the words I am using. I transcribe the words into the computer and then create individual image. I then take a printout of the image and obsessively hand-draw a copy of the printout image onto a piece of paper. I then continue drawing on the paper adding layers of detail. I pay attention to the thickness of line and the contrast of colors when creating the drawings. When I am finished with that drawing, I design another text object and I repeat the process on the paper until I get a layered composition.

    My digital prints take an opposite approach in that I work on paper before with drawings and I scan my drawings into the computer. I then redesigned on top of the drawings with the computer. After I have completed the design, I print the work onto aluminum. 

    My choice of text follows along the lines of my sentimental attachment to the past and the shared experience of something mundane. The sentimental and mundane source material is found in my collection of greeting cards I have received since my birth. The cards were addressed to me and the cards have a personal meaning in that they are connected to relationships with family and friends. At the same time, the cards are mass produced and will have fluid meaning to others that have received them. By using the greeting card, I am tapping into the between space of the personal and the broad experiences of others.

    Other text I have chosen is taken from quotations of artists. In my long academic career as a student, I have used quotations to give weight to my academic papers. Quotes have the power to persuade and give the reader a sense of authority on any particular subject. It interests me what artists have to say about art and so I have included their quotes into my images.

    I also explore poetry as source material. I have approached the sonnet in particular, because of my new attempt to insert syntax to my work. Poetry and visual art create imagery. Poetry describes images through words and visual art presents things to the eye, but both are re-imaged in the mind. By using poetry, I can convert those words into actual images then I can re-re-imagine the poetry and make something new in the process.

    Finally, by taking all three sources of material and smashing the text together in a mixture of shapes on the paper; I can see how a quote from a greeting card can interact with an artist quote and a poem. The images have weighty and serious poetry with the romantic notions of an artists and a completely sentimental wording of a greeting card, which I deconstructed and reorganized into the same kind of images. Thus the text becomes separate from the final product, because the new form has blended the words into an image, and all words blend in similar fashion. What the viewer is left with are hints of the words left behind in the title and on the artwork, but also the viewer is left with a completely new object/image that is separated from the source texts.