Gifts of the Magi

Untitled series
Acrylic and cardstock on Bristol board / December 2010

Untitled series
Sumi ink on watercolor paper / December 2010

Please send glue sticks

Sportive Tricks
Paper collage with monotype cutouts / 18 x 24 in. / December 2010

The original monotype I created in class as an experiment was admittedly (though not intentionally) too derivative of my instructor's own work (that of Jenn Erwin). Here I've used collage as a means to deconstruct and reassemble the piece, incorporating colored cardstock along the way. This intervention creates a new aesthetic approach and achieves a more personal narrative quality.

Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall polyptych
Collage (Sumi ink, watercolor paper, cardstock) / 8.5 x 11 in. (ea.) / Nov.-Dec. 2010

Sweet little lies

These are pieces from a series assigned in AFND 101: Introduction to Drawing I, in which we were to consider and incorporate three influences that inform and/or inspire our work and process. I finally narrowed my subject matter down to Froot Loops, men's fashion magazines, and Cold War-era anxieties. The works exude a sense of humor and charm true to the pop-art tradition (paper doll clothing tabs, sugary cereal "enlarged to show detail"), but my real interest is in our consumer culture: glamour, fantasy, deception, sex, fetish, apocalypse. (I mounted these pieces on the kitchen cabinets of our apartment to digitally photograph them -- sincere apologies to Vermeer for obscuring his masterpieces.) Charcoal (vine and compressed), Sumi ink, pastels, paper collage.

Wet paint



Scorned!
Oil on canvas / 30 x 40 in. / November 2010

Experiment with line, ink

Morning Ritual(s) [And detail]

Sumi ink on paper / 18 x 24 in. / October 2010

Purely for posterity

An American Soldier in Caravaggio Red
Oil and acrylic on canvas / 2 x 4 ft. / Early 2009
Collection of Taylor Miller / Austin, TX

Back to basics

These are very bad digital photographs of details from assignments submitted for AFND 101: Introduction to Drawing I. Some studies are more successful than others, but it has been enriching and gratifying to explore drawing materials and, above all, to put marks on paper. (Graphite and vine charcoal.)